MINNESOTA
Minnesota Public Radio
Madeleine Baran St. Paul, Minn. Oct 2, 2014
A lawsuit filed Thursday in Ramsey County claims that the late Rev. Ramon Buckley sexually assaulted a boy at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Robbinsdale in the late 1970s.
The lawsuit, filed by attorney Patrick Noaker on behalf of an unnamed man, marks the first public allegation of sexual abuse against Buckley, a priest of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis who died in 1999. It accuses the archdiocese of negligence for allegedly failing to protect the boy from Buckley and another priest, the Rev. John McGrath, who served alongside Buckley at Sacred Heart.
Before his death in 1995, McGrath was accused of sexually abusing girls. Two women sued McGrath and the archdiocese in the early 1990s, and Archbishop John Nienstedt included McGrath on a list of “credibly accused” priests released in December 2013.
The lawsuits are allowed under a law passed in May 2013 that gives older victims of child sex abuse more time to sue. Minnesota law previously required sex abuse lawsuits to be filed before a victim turned 24. The Child Victims Act eliminated the statute of limitations for new cases of abuse and created a three-year window for older victims to file suit. The window expires in mid-2016. More than 30 clergy sex abuse lawsuits have been filed so far, according to attorneys at two law firms handling abuse cases.
According to the lawsuit filed Thursday, Buckley first abused the boy in about 1978 or 1979 at the Sacred Heart parish office when the boy was about 12. Buckley summoned the boy from class several times, Noaker said, and over about two years would sexually assault him and send him back to class.
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