MISSOURI
East Missourian
Friday, September 20, 2013
By Emily Priddy ~ Southeast Missourian
Documents released recently as part of a legal settlement show two Catholic priests accused of molesting children in California spent part of their careers in Cape Girardeau and Perryville, Mo.
John Edward Ruhl and John V. “Jack” Farris, members of the St. Louis-based western region of the Vincentian order, were among the defendants in a lawsuit alleging child molestation by multiple clerics.
Under the terms of a 2007 settlement, the defendants’ personnel documents were made public earlier this month.
Among the documents in Ruhl’s file are references to three victims who claimed Ruhl molested them in the 1970s.
Ruhl worked at St. Mary’s Seminary in Perryville from 1961 to 1963 and spent the summer of 1964 at St. Vincent’s College in Cape Girardeau. By mid-1993, he had been placed on “inactive leave” and was not expected to return to active ministry, according to a note in his file.
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