Mother Testifies at Trial Involving Former Altar Boy Who Alleges Abuse by Priest Three Decades Ago

By Judy L. Thomas
Kansas City Star
September 30, 2014

http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article2360087.html

In 2011, Jon David Couzens got a frantic call from a longtime friend who told him that her daughter might be a victim of sexual abuse by a priest.

After the call, Angela Couzens told jurors in a Jackson County courtroom on Tuesday, her son went through an immediate transformation.

“He was curled up in a fetal position, unable to function,” she said, her voice wavering, and he stayed that way for about a month. “He was sobbing day and night whenever I saw him.”

Angela Couzens’ testimony came on the second day of a civil trial involving her son, who alleges that he suffered sexual abuse by Monsignor Thomas O’Brien three decades ago and that the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph was told repeatedly that O’Brien was a danger to children but failed to prevent the abuse.

The diocese contends that no credible evidence exists to prove those allegations and argues that Jon David Couzens’ claims of repressed memory are invalid.

The trial, in Jackson County Circuit Court in Independence, stems from a lawsuit filed by Couzens in 2011 shortly after the Rev. Shawn Ratigan was indicted on child pornography charges. Couzens alleges that O’Brien sexually abused him and three other youths in the early 1980s when they were serving as altar boys at Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church in Independence.

O’Brien, who has been the subject of dozens of sexual abuse lawsuits, was named as a co-defendant in the case but was dismissed after his death in October 2013. He was 87.

Jurors heard testimony from five witnesses Tuesday, including Couzens’ mother, sister and aunt. Couzens contends that he repressed the memories of his abuse for decades but that his friend’s phone call about Ratigan triggered those memories.

Since that moment, Angela Couzens told jurors, her son has been “a very shattered, broken man.”

“Picture the ground going away from you and you were falling in a hole and he was going deeper and deeper into the pit,” she said. “Words cannot describe. I’m very angry, a lot of pain. The pain is so deep that the heart sometimes can’t take it.”

One witness, Sister Rebecca Eichhorn, testified by video that she had worked with O’Brien at St. Elizabeth parish in Kansas City from the late 1970s to mid-1980s. She said that O’Brien was a popular priest and that she never saw any pornographic or inappropriate material in the rectory. Though O’Brien had an alcohol problem and would sometimes slur his words and become highly excitable during meetings, she said, it didn’t impair his ability to perform his role as a priest.

O’Brien was “very dedicated to the church, very prayerful, very faithful to the Lord,” Eichhorn said. “To me he was a shepherd.”

To reach Judy L. Thomas, call 816-234-4334 or send email to jthomas@kcstar.com.