February 15, 2006

Another sex abuse claim filed against Jesuit priest

FAIRBANKS (AK)
Fairbanks News-Miner

By MARY BETH SMETZER, Staff Writer

Another complaint against Jesuit priest James E. Jacobson was filed in Bethel Superior Court on Tuesday.

The plaintiff, Jane C. Doe, alleges Jacobson raped her three times in the winter and spring of 1967, when she was 16 years old and Jacobson was the village priest in a rural community in western Alaska.

Jacobson, who served in western Alaska from the early 1960s to 1976, is named in another outstanding civil suit, filed in October 2005, as allegedly sexually assaulting two women, impregnating them and leaving two sons behind. DNA test results attached to the complaint show there is more than a 99 percent probability the two male complainants were fathered by Jacobson.

Both civil suits also name as defendants the Catholic Bishop of Northern Alaska and the Society of Jesus, Oregon Province and Alaska.

The latest suit claims the plaintiff was 16 years old at the time when the rapes occurred in a village church building, and that Jacobson used restraints, threats and physical force to perform both oral sex and vaginal intercourse. The plaintiff claims it was her first sexual experience.

Posted by kshaw at February 15, 2006 07:18 AM