JANESVILLE (WI)
Janesville Gazette
(Published Thursday, September 8, 2005 10:53:41 AM CDT)
By Sid Schwartz
Gazette Staff
Three of the Rock County jurors who heard a former Janesville priest's defamation lawsuit said the evidence wouldn't be enough to convict the priest of sexual abuse in criminal court.
But two of them told The Janesville Gazette that the evidence convinced them to a lower standard of proof that Rev. Gerald Vosen's accuser told the truth.
"I think the jury's charge was that we needed to be more than 50 percent sure. We didn't have to be absolutely, positively convinced," a Janesville woman on the jury said.
"It wasn't as severe as a criminal trial. I think that was the prime thing in my mind," she said.
In March 2004, Vosen filed a defamation lawsuit against a man, now 26, who told Catholic Church authorities that Vosen sexually assaulted him when he was in fifth and sixth grade at St. John Vianney Catholic School in Janesville.