DUBUQUE (IA)
Des Moines Rieger
By SHIRLEY RAGSDALE
REGISTER RELIGION EDITOR
August 19, 2005
Despite Dubuque Catholic officials' adamant claims that the archdiocese had no reports until the 1990s of a former chancellor's sexual misconduct, court documents reveal that priests and former seminarians told other priests in the 1950s and '60s they had been assaulted by the chancellor.
The Rev. William Roach, who served as chancellor and vicar general of the archdiocese, and lived for a time in the home of Archbishop Leo Binz, is the subject of a lawsuit against the archdiocese.
Several early reports of sexual misconduct and sexual assault are summarized in court documents filed this week by attorneys for James Cummins, a Dallas, Texas-based correspondent for NBC News. Last year, Cummins sued the archdiocese, alleging he was sexually assaulted by Roach when he was 17 in the early 1960s and an altar boy at Immaculate Conception church in Cedar Rapids.
Roach retired from active ministry in 1990 and died in an alcohol-related car accident in 1997. At the time, archdiocesan documents show church officials couldn't suppress reports that Roach "was over the legal limit of alcohol" at the time of the crash.