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	Priest Sex-abuse Trial Begins in Belleville By Nicholas J.c. Pistor St. Louis Post-Dispatch August 20, 2008 http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/illinoisnews/story/5FD8BBA6F635CFD5862574AB005D1E9F?OpenDocument BELLEVILLE -- The Belleville Diocese has covered up decades of sex abuse by priests, an attorney said this morning during opening arguments in a civil lawsuit filed by a former altar boy who says he was abused by a priest. Michael Weilmuenster, representing the former altar boy, told jurors that his client was molested by the Rev. Raymond Kownacki just months after the Belleville Diocese had received complaints that Kownacki raped a girl and tried to perform an abortion on her. Weilmuenster said in an opening statement this morning that Kownacki told his client, who was 12 years old at the time: "The Catholic church condones this, other priests do it." The attorney said the church covered the abuse up and moved Kownacki from parish to parish. The defense didn't deny the allegations of sex abuse, but said they can't counter the allegations of a cover-up because the incidents took place so long ago. "We can't contradict it because people are dead and the plaintiff waited 35 years," said David Wells, an attorny from St. Louis who is representing the Belleville Diocese. The diocese did remove Kownacki, 73, from ministry after it formed a citizen review panel in the mid-'90s that examined sex abuse by priests. Kownacki was a former pastor at St. Martin of Tours Church in Washington Park, among other places in the Belleville Diocese. He was removed from active ministry in 1995 but not defrocked. He lives in Dupo.
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