7 Men File Sex Abuse Suits against Chicago Presbytery

By Meredith Rodriguez
Chicago Tribune
January 22, 2015

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-douglas-mason-lawsuit-met-20150121-story.html

Seven men filed suit Wednesday against the Chicago Presbytery and related organizations, claiming they were sexually abused by a now-deceased minister whose trail of allegations led to a multimillion-dollar settlement.

The plaintiffs, three of whom filed one lawsuit and four who filed the other, allege that they were abused by Presbyterian minister Douglas Mason, whose alleged sex abuse led the Presbytery to settle with four accusers in 2007. The settlement was confidential, but church officials told the Tribune last year that the amount was $11 million. Mason died in 2004.

In one of Wednesday's suits, three men now in their 40s allege that Mason abused them from 1982 to 1986 while he was pastor at Austin United Presbyterian Church, where the three attended.

The Presbytery at the time encouraged pastors to counsel young men in private and ignored warnings that Mason was a pedophile, the suit claims.

The three plaintiffs say in the suit that they didn't remember their alleged abuse until they read about details of the Presbytery's 2007 settlement early last year, when church officials voted to sell a campground in Michigan. That vote came as the Presbytery was navigating nearly $8 million in debt. The head of the local Presbytery at the time wouldn't say whether the two were related.

In the second suit, four men now in their late 30s allege that Mason abused them while they were part of the San Marcos Youth Ministry, which served children in kindergarten through the 12th grade.

According to that suit, Mason began sexually molesting the plaintiffs in the 1990s. Mason also paid a portion of the plaintiffs' Catholic school tuition at St. Gregory the Great High School, according to the suit, and would routinely visit and check them out of school about once a month with the sole purpose of sexually abusing them.

School administrators knew he was checking the students out and did not alert their parents, according to the suit. This happened through their high school years, according to the suit.

In the second suit, the four plaintiffs claimed they did not realize that the Chicago Presbytery bore any responsibility for the abuse or knew Mason had sexually abused children until the February news about the Presbytery campground sale.

Both lawsuits name the Chicago Presbyterian Church, the Presbytery of Chicago and its Church Extension Board.

The first also names Austin United Presbyterian Church. The second suit also names the Archdiocese of Chicago.

The Chicago Presbytery said in a written statement that it had not received legal notification of the suits and could not comment on them.

The Archdiocese said Wednesday night that it hadn't seen the lawsuit and couldn't comment on it.

Contact: mmrodriguez@tribune.com