Sunday, August 11, 2002
Sex abuse allegations unsealed
The Associated Press
LEXINGTON, Ky. - The allegations of five people who filed a lawsuit in May alleging they were sexually abused by priests in the Catholic dioceses of Lexington and Covington have been unsealed by the Kentucky Court of Appeals.
The lawsuit, without parts that remain sealed for another week, includes the following allegations:
Samuel Lee Edwards Graywolf of Nicholasville alleges that in the mid-1970s, when he was about 15 and a foster child, he was provided alcoholic beverages and molested by a priest at the Cathedral of Christ the King rectory. Mr. Graywolf says he does not know the priest's identity.
James Mahan of Los Angeles, formerly of Lexington, alleges that he was molested by the Rev. Leonard Nienaber in the mid-1960s in the bathroom at Mary Queen of the Holy Rosary School.
William Lalley of Lexington, who attended Catholic school in Maysville as a youth, alleges that when he was in the seventh grade, in about 1968, he was molested by the Rev. Earl Bierman.
Edwin Gonzalez of Lexington, who moved from Puerto Rico in the early 1970s at about age 22, alleges he was abused by a priest at St. Peter Claver Church. Mr. Gonzalez did not know the priest's full name.
Mr. Gonzalez, who developed an alcohol problem and did not speak English well then, alleges that the priest gave him alcohol, even though he knew about Mr. Gonzalez's problem, and molested him at the church rectory several times.
Kay Montgomery of Lexington, a native of Owensboro, alleges that in 1967, while she attended the Academy of the Immaculate Conception in Ferdinand, Ind., she was sexually molested by a priest identified to her as the Rev. Ed Fritsch.
The lawsuit says Father Fritsch often visited the boarding school on Sundays, when he took Ms. Montgomery for rides in his car and molested her after assuring the nuns who ran the school that he was Ms. Montgomery's “counselor or spiritual adviser.”
The lawsuit says that Ms. Montgomery later learned that Father Fritsch was a priest in the Covington diocese, although some of her family members recall his being at their home parish, Blessed Sacrament Parish in Owensboro.
Lexington churches were in the Covington diocese until the Lexington diocese was created in 1988.
Two priests named in the lawsuit have been involved in previous abuse cases.
Father Bierman was convicted in 1993 and sentenced to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to molesting six young males when teaching at Covington Latin School.
In 1994 Father Nienaber pleaded guilty to charges of sex crimes from 1964 to 1977, while he was pastor at Mary Queen of the Holy Rosary. He was sentenced to 10 years in an alternative program for members of the religious order who need treatment and psychotherapy.
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Sex abuse allegations unsealed
