MINNESOTA
Washington Post
By Associated Press April 19
MINNEAPOLIS — A Catholic priest who was deported to his native India after completing his jail sentence in Minnesota for sexually abusing a child is the subject of a new lawsuit against a diocese in India that allegedly returned him to ministry with Vatican approval.
Attorney Jeff Anderson filed the lawsuit in federal court in Minnesota on Monday on behalf of Megan Peterson, who says the Rev. Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul abused her starting in 2004 when she was 14 or 15 and he was a priest at her church in the northern Minnesota town of Greenbush. Her lawsuit seeks unspecified damages in excess of $75,000 from the Ootacamund Diocese in India’s Tamil Nadu state.
“This is not only shocking, it’s a total break of the pledge Pope Francis has made that he will not return to the practices of the past,” Anderson said.
Peterson said at a news conference Tuesday that she felt “abused, degraded and re-victimized all over again” when she learned that Bishop Arulappan Amalraj lifted Jeyapaul’s suspension in February after consulting with the Vatican.
“Children deserve to be protected in India and nobody is doing this at this point,” Peterson said.
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