Man with Fl Ties on New Accused Priest List

By Ryan Howard
Forest Lake Times
October 24, 2014

http://forestlaketimes.com/2014/10/24/man-with-fl-ties-on-new-accused-priest-list/

A former priest who worked in the Forest Lake area and reportedly still lives in town is on a new list of Roman Catholic priests that the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis says have had allegations of sexual abuse of a minor filed against them.

John Owens, 85, provided what the archdiocese called “temporary weekend assistance” in and around Forest Lake from 1999 to 2004. He spent most of his priestly career (1960-1999) in the Diocese of Bismarck in North Dakota, where the allegations of abuse originate from. According to the list of 17 names released by the Twin Cities-based archdiocese on Oct. 23, there have been no substantiated claims of child abuse against Owens stemming from his time in Forest Lake. The archdiocese also reported that Owens still lives in Forest Lake, but the Forest Lake Times could not obtain contact information for him before this story was published.

As part of legal action and increased investigations into its past treatment of the victims and alleged perpetrators of sexual abuse in the archdiocese, local church officials have released a number of names over the last several months of priests who have served in the archdiocese who have been accused of sexual misconduct. The Oct. 23 list was released as part of a legal settlement with Jeff Anderson and Associates, a St. Paul-based firm that has brought legal action regarding sexual abuse against the archdiocese a number of times over the years.

While in Bismarck, Owens served as the communications director for the diocese and ran a radio advice show for area adolescents called “Padre’s Platters.” The diocese alerted the North Dakota Department of Human Services in 2002 that a report of sexual misconduct against a minor had been reported regarding Owens. According to the diocese, Owens was instructed to “lead a life of prayer and penance,” and the diocese ordered that he be monitored so as to not pose a risk to minors. In 2005, three years after the Diocese of Bismarck alerted the NDHS, the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis removed Owens from ministry.

Owens is not the first person who served in Forest Lake to be named on lists of the accused by the archdiocese. Perhaps the most famous locally is Lee Krautkremer, who along with the archdiocese was sued by Columbus resident Theodore Krammer Jr. in 2002 for abuse Krammer said he suffered at the hands of Krautkremer in 1977, when Krammer was 10 and Krautkremer was serving as associate priest at St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Forest Lake. The Minnesota Court of Appeals later ruled that the statute of limitations had run out on the crime.

Krammer originally sued because the archdiocese had left Krautkremer’s name off of a list of priests who had committed sexual abuse. In the subsequent legal battle, archdiocese memos came to light that confirmed church officials meeting with the Krammers in 1983 about the incident. At that time, Krautkremer was serving in Lino Lakes. One memo, written by then-Archbishop John Roach, recommended that Krautkremer be moved from Lino Lakes because it was too close to Forest Lake.

The three other priests on archdiocese lists who have served in Forest Lake are Robert Zasacki, Jerome Kern and Louis Joseph Heitzer. Zasacki, who served at St. Peter’s from 1984 to 1986, had allegations against him from his time in New Jersey in the 1970s. Kern, according to Anderson and Associates, has more than 20 different allegations against him, though none appear to be from the time he served in St. Peter’s. Forest Lake was his last assignment before he was removed from ministry.

Heitzer, who was once characterized by a high-ranking archdiocese official as “perhaps the most abusive priest ever” in the archdiocese, served at St. Peter’s in 1967 and 1968. Decades later, a St. Cloud man reported that he had been molested by Heitzer in 1968.