NEW YORK
Editor & Publisher
By E&P Staff
Published: July 23, 2005 4:30 PM ET
NEW YORK Jim Cummins, a longtime NBC News correspondent, has accused the Catholic archdiocese in Iowa of covering up sexual abuse he suffered while an altar boy.
He has been chief of NBC News' Southwest Bureau, based in Dallas, since 1989.
Cummins said he was abused by three priests in 1962, in Cedar Rapids, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court in Iowa. He filed the lawsuit last year, but it only became known this week when the archdiocese, in filing its response, identified him as an NBC correspondent.
The archdiocese denied the allegations and asked that the lawsuit be dismissed. It said even if the charges were true, the lawsuit was filed long after the statute of limitations — which is two years in Iowa — had passed.
Cummins, 60, declined to comment Friday, but agreed to publication of his name, the Dallas Morning News (which usually refuses to print names in such cases) reported.