SPRINGFIELD (IL)
Illinois Times
December 6, 2018
By Bruce Rushton
I wonder about Virginia Galloway.
In 2004, she sued the Diocese of Springfield, alleging an awful thing. In the late 1960s, when she was 10 years old, she said that the Rev. Richard Niebrugge took her under his care as a foster child and began sexually abusing her. A decade later, she said in her lawsuit, she gave birth to his child.
In 1983, five years after Galloway had a baby, Niebrugge died. But enablers remained, according to the lawsuit that named as defendants the Rev. Herman Niebrugge, the priest’s brother who died in 2004, and the Rev. Theodore Baumann, who retired in 2008 after a career spent as a holy man – last year, he was reported to be living at a retirement home for priests in Belleville. Both Herman Niebrugge and Baumann, Galloway said in her lawsuit, knew that she was being abused but didn’t report it and did nothing to stop it.
Courts ruled that Galloway didn’t sue soon enough, and her case was dismissed without being considered on its merits. Galloway had issues, her own lawyer acknowledged when she sued. Psychological problems included a multiple personality disorder brought on, at least in part, by being sexually abused by a priest, attorney Rex Carr said more than a decade ago. No DNA testing had been performed prior to filing suit, Carr told the media, but there were “millions of factual statements that connect him to her” and he expected that science would confirm claims made in court.
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