Kansas City Sex Abuse Trial Features Flung Accusations, Theories on Repressed Memories

By Isaac Avilucea
Connecticut Law Tribune
October 10, 2014

http://www.ctlawtribune.com/top-stories/id=1202673073702/Latest-Sex-Abuse-Suits-Target-Jehovahs-Witnesses?mcode=1202615402746&curindex=1&slreturn=20140911125003

On a day of downpours in the Kansas City region, the real thunder rang here in a Jackson County courtroom, where lawyers on both sides of a lawsuit alleging sexual abuse by a priest struck to discredit each other's expert witnesses on the issue of repressed memory.

On Thursday, Dr. Harrison Pope, a research psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, retook the stand to continue what he stated the day before: There is no scientific evidence supporting the idea of repressed memory. The notion has so far been a central aspect of the suit brought by Jon David Couzens against the Kansas City-St. Joseph diocese.

Couzens has alleged that Msgr. Thomas O'Brien sexually abused him and three other boys on several occasions at Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church in Independence when they were children. Two of the other three boys have since died, and the third has denied any memory of abuse. O'Brien died in October 2013 at the age of 87.

Couzens has testified that memories of the abuse had remained buried in his mind until a May 2011 phone call from a friend, who was worried that her daughter had been sexually abused by a priest, resurrected them.

The Kansas City Star has reported that the case is the first for the diocese involving sexual abuse to go to trial.