MISSOURI
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
By Joel Currier St. Louis Post-Dispatch
ST. LOUIS • Circuit Judge Steven Ohmer on Monday set a March 27 trial date for a civil lawsuit in which a Lincoln County teenager and her family accused St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson of knowing a priest was a danger to children before the cleric was charged with molesting the teen in 2012.
The lawsuit was filed the following year in Lincoln County by the girl’s parents against Carlson and the Archdiocese of St. Louis after she told police the Rev. Xiu Hui “Joseph” Jiang, then an associate pastor at the St. Louis Cathedral Basilica in the Central West End, had molested her at her home in Old Monroe. Jiang was added as a defendant in the lawsuit last year.
The alleged victim was 16 at the time of the alleged abuse. Jiang was in his late 20s. Charges of child endangerment and witness tampering — Jiang had been accused of leaving a $20,000 check and an apology on a family’s car as hush money — were dismissed in 2013.
At a hearing Monday in Ohmer’s courtroom, Kenneth Chackes, a lawyer for the alleged victim, described a letter sent to Carlson from a man whose family became close to him after helping him emigrate to the United States from China. The letter was sent before Jiang was ordained in 2010 warning Carlson that Jiang was a threat to children because he suffered “deep psychological problems,” “faked a relationship of intimacy with his family” and “lacked maturity.”
Jiang’s lawyers denied those claims Monday and sought dismissal of the lawsuit, arguing the alleged acts did not occur on archdiocesan property and were not intended to inflict emotional distress.
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