MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
By BOB PURVIS
bpurvis@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Aug. 11, 2005
A fifth person alleging sexual abuse by clergy has sued the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.
The plaintiff, referred to as John Doe 5, alleges in a civil complaint filed in Milwaukee County Circuit Court that the archdiocese allowed Father Siegfried Widera to have unsupervised and unlimited access to the boy and other children while knowing he was a pedophile, and failed to tell parents he had been previously convicted of sexually molesting a child, effectively allowing him to molest again.
According to the complaint, Widera sexually abused the boy from 1969 to 1976, a period in which he served at four parishes in the diocese: St. John de Nepomac in Milwaukee from 1967 to 1969; St. Mary Help of Christians in West Allis from 1969 to 1972; St. Mary's in Port Washington from 1972 to 1973; and St. Andrew's in Delavan from 1973 to 1976.
Attorneys representing four others are appealing a decade-old ruling that has prevented victims in Wisconsin from seeking damages from the archdiocese.