ALASKA
Anchorage Daily News
By LISA DEMER
Anchorage Daily News
Published: October 14, 2005
Last Modified: October 14, 2005 at 03:15 AM
A Jesuit priest decades ago sexually assaulted two women in different Western Alaska villages who became pregnant and gave birth to his sons, a new lawsuit alleges.
The children, now grown, and the mother of one filed suit Thursday afternoon in Bethel Superior Court against the priest, James E. Jacobson, the Fairbanks Diocese, and the Jesuits of the Oregon Province and Alaska. The other mother is dead.
"In effect, these Native children of the Church were abandoned and left to be raised and cared for by their impoverished Native families in rural Alaska," the plaintiff's attorney, Chris Cooke, wrote in a statement to news reporters.
Cooke is a partner of Ken Roosa in the firm Cooke, Roosa & Valcarce, which has offices in Anchorage and Bethel. Roosa has filed a number of other complaints against the Catholic Church alleging sexual abuse by priests and other church leaders.