Victim Claims Church Failed To Act On Abuse Claim

By Edmund H. Mahony
Hartford Courant
October 24, 2014

http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-church-abuse-1025-20141024-story.html

A woman who says she was sexually abused as a minor by her church pastor's son asserts in a new lawsuit that, by failing to act on her complaint, the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut and its employees permitted the abuse of additional children.

The unidentified accuser, in a suit filed in Superior Court in Fairfield County, claims she was repeatedly sexually assaulted by Jesse Osmun while she was participating under Osmun's supervision in a youth program at St. Peter's Church in Milford.

Also named in the suit, brought by attorney Douglas Mahoney of Bridgeport, are Andrew Osmun, Jesse Osmun's father and Rector of St. Peter's Church; St. Peter's Church, and the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut.

The victim claims in the suit that she was abused at the church by Jesse Osmun when she was 13 years old in 2007. In 2010, Jesse Osmun began work for the Peace Corp in South Africa, where he was accused of sexually assaulting three girls, ages 3-6.

Jesse Osmun admitted abusing the children in Africa and, in 2012, was sentenced to 15 years in a U.S. prison under a federal law prohibiting U.S. citizens from traveling abroad to engage in illegal sexual activity.

In the lawsuit, the woman complains among other things of the "guilt that she experiences caused by the fact that the defendant Jesse Osmun went on to sexually assault other children."

The suit asserts that the victim was abused as a result of her involvement in a St Peter's program in which youngsters collected food donations for people in Kenya. Jesse Osmun, then about 30-years old, supervised the program at his father's direction, the suit claims.

According to the lawsuit, the victim complained of the abuse to Andrew Osmun, who was obligated under state law to report it to law enforcement or child welfare authorities. The suit says that Andrew Osmun did not make the referral.

Not long afterward, according to the suit, "Andrew Osmun assisted the defendant Jesse Osmun in achieving a position with the peace Corps where he went on to sexually assault other children."

The Peace Corps assigned Osmun in March 2010 to work on the website at an AIDS treatment center in Greytown, South Africa. Two months later, a preschool teacher discovered him abusing three girls. According to information presented at Jesse Osmun's sentencing in federal court.

Jesse Osmun remains imprisoned. Neither his father nor an officer of the Episcopal Diocese could be reached..