DENVER (CO)
The Denver Post
November 12, 2018
By Elise Schmelzer
Former seminarian says he feels betrayed by the church, lied to by those he knows in its leadership
A Catholic priest in Denver accused of having sexually abused a young seminarian over the course of four years in the early 2000s was placed in a local church with a school after the Archdiocese of Denver learned of the allegations.
The clergyman, Kent Drotar, lost permission to work as a priest less than two months later and was removed from his post at Notre Dame Catholic Church in southwest Denver after a disciplinary team found the allegations against him credible, as first reported by The Philadelphia Inquirer on Monday and confirmed by The Denver Post.
Stephen Szutenbach, now 37, studied at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver from 2001 to 2004, and said Drotar — then the vice rector at the seminary — repeatedly made unwanted sexual contact with him. The abuse began in the summer of 2000 when Szutenbach was 18 and worked as a groundskeeper at the seminary after graduating from Conifer High School, Szutenbach told the Post in an interview Monday.
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