WASHINGTON
Bothell Reporter
By RAECHEL DAWSON
Bothell Reporter Reporter
November 20, 2012
A child sex abuse claim, which involved a Kirkland church, has been settled. A trial was scheduled to begin against the Seattle Archdiocese next Monday but the parish district settled for $635,000 on Thursday.
Former youth minister Jim Funnell at St. John Vianney Church in Kirkland allegedly sexually abused the plaintiff, identified by his initials D.E., in the mid-1980s for more than one year. It is said others were abused as well.
D.E. was living in Kirkland at the time of the abuse but now resides in Bothell.
Funnell was hired, which the plaintiff claims, during the time when former Seattle Archbishop Raymond Haunthausen and other Catholic bishops were collaborating on how to address the emerging sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic church.
However, the Archdiocese failed to adequately warn its employees and timely adopt the policies regarding child sex abuse, and Funnell slipped through the cracks because church officials failed to conduct a proper background check, said the victim.
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