WYOMING
Billings Gazette
By WILLIAM BROWNING Casper Star-Tribune | Posted: Friday, January 20, 2012
CASPER — A Colorado woman has filed a lawsuit against a deacon at a local church alleging the church official “imposed a sexual relationship” on her after she was referred to him for counseling a decade ago.
The lawsuit claims that Donald Morris Stewart, a deacon at St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, began the sexual relationship after the woman started receiving counseling from him in 2002.
The eight-page lawsuit was filed Tuesday in the U.S. District of Wyoming. St. Anthony’s Catholic Church and the Diocese of Cheyenne are named as defendants in the suit, as well.
“Stewart imposed a sexual relationship during plaintiff’s church-sanctioned bereavement counseling with (the woman),” the lawsuits states. “The other defendants knew or should have known of this inappropriate and meretricious sexual relationship imposed upon plaintiff by Stewart in the course and scope of his employment.”
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