By Peter Smith
The Courier-Journal
December 13, 2010
http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20101213/NEWS01/312130079/1008/NEWS01/Presbyterians+sued+over+alleged+sex+abuse
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| Suzie Abajian, wife of abuse victim Sean Thomas Coppedge, right, comforts her husband during a media conference speaking about abuse allegations against the Presbyterian Church. (By Bill Luster, The Courier-Journal) December 13 , 2010 (cj) |
A California man sued the Louisville-based Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Monday, saying the church failed to protect him and other children from an alleged sexual predator who assaulted him in 1988 in a Congo mission boarding house.
The lawsuit, filed in Jefferson Circuit Court, comes two months after the church issued a 546-page report documenting sexual or physical abuse involving its overseas missions between 1950 and 1990.
Most of the victims were identified as children of missionaries serving in Africa and Asia.
The plaintiff in the suit, Sean Coppedge, said he applauds the report and that he provided information and other help to the denominational commission that wrote it. But he said the denomination needs to be held accountable for failing to protect its missionary children.
It’s believed to be the first suit against the denomination in connection with abuse in the mission field in the latter 20th century — abuse that has now been documented in two extensive denominational reports in the past decade.
Coppedge said he hopes other victims also come forward to “find healing and justice.”
His suit focuses on events at the Methodist-Presbyterian Hostel, which was jointly owned by the Presbyterians and the United Methodist Church.
He said he was sexually assaulted at age 14 by an older, stronger boy at the boarding house in Kinshasa — the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, then known as Zaire. Coppedge was staying there while his parents, Presbyterian missionaries, worked about 600 miles away in a remote station.
“On the night I was sexually abused I immediately informed the Presbyterian authorities, but little was done, even though they knew the perpetrator had abused at least one other person prior to me,” Coppedge said in an emotional news conference Monday at the Louisville office of one of his attorneys, Ann Oldfather.
“In fact, the senior Presbyterian employee at the boarding house told me to keep quiet about the matter, and soon the perpetrator was allowed to return to the boarding residence,” he said.
He added that he lived in “fear of facing my perpetrator” at the boarding house or at their school and church.
The suit says that the denomination had reports of abuse at mission posts throughout the world before Coppedge’s 1988 assault and that it “knew or should have known … that its mission children were vulnerable to sexual abuse.”
The suit seeks damages for emotional distress, lost wages, counseling costs and other injuries.
In October top Presbyterian officials apologized to victims of abuse upon the release of the report by its Independent Abuse Review Panel, which documented 29 cases of sexual abuse of minors and one of physical abuse in the mission field.
That wide-ranging investigation was prompted by an earlier report.
A separate, independent committee reported in 2002 that a deceased missionary, William Pruitt of Dallas, had sexually abused 22 girls and women in the Congo and the United States from the 1940s to the 1980s — and that Presbyterian co-workers failed to act aggressively when they learned of the allegations.
The denomination responded to that report by adopting a series of reforms to its constitution in 2005, imposing such things as stricter requirements for reporting abuse to civil authorities and giving accusers more say in the disciplinary process.
Rob Bullock, director of communication for Presbyterians’ General Assembly Mission Council, said he couldn’t immediately comment until church officials had a chance to review the suit.
Coppedge, 36, called on the church to take stricter steps, such as advocating for more victim-friendly state laws regarding the time limits for bringing lawsuits and criminal charges. He also urged it to require that all volunteers be required to report abuse and undergo background checks.
Reporter Peter Smith can be reached at (502) 582-4469.
Contact: psmith@courier-journal.com
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