By Pat Kinney
Courier
November 6, 2007
http://www.wcfcourier.com/articles/2007/11/06/news/metro/0511352f9bbec64f8625738b004e4272.txt
WATERLOO — A Waterloo attorney for deceased veteran Iowa-born NBC News correspondent Jim Cummins praised his courage in bringing the first of what became a series of clergy child sex abuse lawsuits against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dubuque.
"He was willing to put his name on the line. He felt very strongly about it," Waterloo attorney Tom Staack said of Cummins, who died Oct. 26 of cancer at age 62.
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| Jim Cummins |
"We just have a great deal of respect and affection for him, because he was the one who really initiated the first call that really was responsible for this thing starting with respect to the Archdiocese of Dubuque," Staack said.
Cummins was the first of 20 clients Staack and Swanson represented that were involved in a $5 million 2006 out-of-court settlement of clergy sex abuse suits and claims against the archdiocese. That settlement included several current and former residents of Waterloo and Northeast Iowa.
Cummins a native of Cedar Rapids and an NBC correspondent for more than 30 years, filed his suit after covering a Catholic bishops conference in Dallas in 2002 as the scandal of widespread generations-old incidents of child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy became more widely publicized than it ever had before. According to news accounts, in covering that story, Cummins interviewed the family of one victim who had committed suicide.
Acting on behalf of Cummins, in 2003 Swanson and Staack filed suit in U.S. District Court in Cedar Rapids against the archdiocese, alleging Cummins was abused by the late Rev. William Roach, a former archdiocese vicar general, when Roach was assigned to Immaculate Conception parish in Cedar Rapids in 1962.
"Here was a public figure willing to come forward," Staack said. "When we filed his case, that really prompted other people to come forward."
Staack and Swanson similarly settled another batch of abuse claims earlier this year, in which the archdiocese paid a total of $2.6 million to nine additional individuals who say they were sexually abused by priests in incidents occurring from the 1940s through the 1990s.
Cummins "was just a wonderful, warm person," Staack said recalling that one of his and Cummins' first conversations was about their high school basketball playing days in the early 1960s —- Staack at West Waterloo, Cummins on a state champion team at Cedar Rapids Regis —- and their common opponents.
Steve Theisen of Hudson, a former Dubuque police officer and co-founder of the Northeast Iowa chapter of Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said, "We praise Jim for his courage coming forward. It's important that people realize that survivors are in all walks of life."
At the time of the 2006 settlement, Cummins said it was "very reassuring" to him when other victims later stepped forward.
"If young kids see that people stand up and say, 'This happened to me,' then it will be easier for them when it happens. And that's what we should take away from it," Cummins said.
Contact Pat Kinney at (319) 291-1484 or pat.kinney@wcfcourier.com
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