Man sues Archdiocese of Denver, two disgraced priests, alleging sexual abuse when he was a boy

DENVER (CO)
KUSA - NBC 9News [Denver CO]

January 24, 2024

By Kevin Vaughan

[Photo above: Michael Stano, lower left, during his time as an altar boy at Notre Dame Catholic Church in Denver. Monsignor Richard Hiester is on the left. Credit: Courtesy of Michael Stano. Report includes a video with other images.]

Emotion caught in Michael Stano’s voice as he talked about his troubled childhood – and the question he heard repeatedly as his family struggled to understand his behavior.

“I always knew there was something wrong or something different about me – I shouldn’t say wrong,” Stano told 9NEWS. “My grandmother would shake me regularly, and, you know, ‘What’s going on?’ And, you know, ‘What’s causing this?’

“She would never say, you know, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ My grandmother would never say that. She would always say, ‘What happened to you?’”

When he was a boy, he could never answer that question.

“I completely repressed everything,” he said.

Now he has an answer, laid out in painstaking detail in a lawsuit filed in Denver District Court that alleges he suffered years of sexual abuse at the hands of Roman Catholic priests. The suit alleges that he was molested the first time at age 6 and that it continued for more than a decade.

At the time Stano alleges the abuse started, he was an altar boy at Notre Dame church in Denver.

“Our family is a six-plus generation Catholic family,” Stano told 9NEWS. “We were extremely dedicated to our faith, our religion, to the message that God brought people every day.

“The church – the community – was the epicenter of our world,” he said. “We weren’t drop-in Catholics.”

According to the suit, Stano repressed the memories of the assaults for decades. Then, in 2022, he alleges that a fight with his partner broke them loose.

“I knew something was wrong,” Stano said. “I still didn’t understand. But there was a moment during that fight where something triggered, or clicked, or what have you, and it all came to me – yeah, I was heavily abused. … And then the memories just kept coming and kept getting worse, and worse, and worse over time.”

The suit names the Archdiocese of Denver and two disgraced priests, James Moreno and Robert Whipkey – both identified as child sex abusers in reports issued by state Attorney General Phil Weiser in 2019 and 2020.

“I don’t want to talk to anybody,” Moreno told a 9NEWS reporter before closing the door to his home.

No one answered a door at Whipkey’s home, and he did not respond to a message left there.

Kevin McGreevy, an attorney representing Moreno and Whipkey, said they both “deny the allegations of sexual abuse” and declined to comment further.

Investigators working for Weiser’s office found credible evidence that Moreno sexually abused a teenage boy in Denver between 1978 and 1980. During the investigation, Moreno admitted the abuse.

Those same investigators found credible evidence that Whipkey was repeatedly naked while in the presence of four sixth-grade boys who shared a cabin with him during a 1998 retreat in the mountains west of Colorado Springs. In 2008, he was convicted of indecent exposure after a police officer saw him jogging naked on a high school’s track in Weld County.

Kelly Clark, spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Denver, said in a statement that the church has “improved its protocols for handling historical claims of sexual abuse” based on recommendations from the reports issued by Weiser’s office.

“The Archdiocese of Denver is aware of the legal complaint from Mr. Stano, and we are following our protocols,” Clark wrote in an e-mail. “The two priests specifically named in the complaint are retired, and neither are involved in any ministry with the public.

“The Archdiocese cannot comment any further.”

Clark did not respond to questions about whether the archdiocese had taken any action to remove their priestly faculties or whether it continues to support either one financially.

“The wall of denial has to come down and I want the public to know who I am – what it did to my family,” Stano told 9NEWS.

The suit alleges Stano was first abused by Monsignor Richard Hiester while he was assigned to Notre Dame church in the 1970s. Hiester died in 1993 – and has never been publicly accused of child sex abuse until now.

“I am very sad if this is true; it is not the uncle I knew,” said Richard Hiester, his nephew and namesake.

The priest was a venerated figure among Colorado Catholics for decades. A Denver native, Hiester was ordained in Rome in 1937, served as a military chaplain in the South Pacific during World War II, sang in – and later directed – the celebrated Cathedral Choir, and from 1954 through 1968 headed up the archdiocese’s Camp St. Malo at the foot of Mount Meeker south of Estes Park.

While Hiester served as director of Camp St. Malo, a 10-year-old boy named Bobby Bizup vanished in August 1958. Nearly a year later, a counselor and a group of boys found some of his remains high on Mount Meeker, several miles from the camp.

At the time, authorities concluded Bobby’s death was a tragic case of a boy getting lost in the woods and succumbing in the elements.

However, a two-year 9NEWS investigation raised numerous questions about what actually happened – stories that helped spur a federal investigation.

The 9NEWS investigation found that at least three of the counselors working at the camp the day Bobby vanished – including one believed to have been among the last to see him – went on to be priests who were credibly accused of sexually molesting children.

Multiple witnesses at the camp that day told 9NEWS that something upset the boy before he disappeared.

In addition, Rev. Hiester waited three days after the discovery of the boy’s remains to report that to authorities. And the boy’s skull somehow ended up in the possession of a Denver doctor who was prominent in the Catholic church. After his death, the doctor’s son hung onto it – turning it over to federal investigators after seeing the 9NEWS stories about the case.

Federal investigators, hampered by the fact many of those at the camp in 1958 are dead, have so far been unable to determine exactly what happened.

After Stano filed his lawsuit, the current priest at Notre Dame – the Rev. Edward Buelt – spoke to the congregation about it.

“I’ve been working with this individual, Michael, for over a year now, and I have come to believe him, and his family, who are still parishoners in our beloved parish community,” Buelt said. “I share this with you, first of all, in cause of transparency and of honesty.”

Buelt said that he also wanted the congregation to know that “we cannot hide these crimes of victimhood or violence against one another, especially our children.”

He urged anyone who had been abused to come to talk to him – “so that we can apologize, so that we can serve you in every way that we can, so that we can put an end to this horrible evil, which has been allowed as smoke to enter through the doors of our church and to darken our Catholic life.”

Buelt told 9NEWS that no one else had reported being abused by Hiester to him directly – but declined to say whether he knew of any allegations made to others.

He also said that several years ago – likely in 2019 – he removed Hiester’s name from the family center at Notre Dame and took down a portrait of him that had been on display. Asked why, he said that in general he believes the church should not name things after people – but he declined to say whether he took that action as a result of any particular incident or allegation.

Stano’s suit seeks a jury trial and a financial award “in an amount which will fully and fairly compensate him for his injuries and damages both past and future …”

This week, the attorneys for the Archdiocese of Denver filed a motion to dismiss the suit, asserting that the idea of repressed memories had been “largely debunked” and that Stano’s suit had failed to establish sufficient factual allegations to state any plausible claim upon which relief can be granted.” A formal response from Moreno and Whipkey is due Feb. 7.

Stano told 9NEWS that his abusers betrayed not just him but the trust placed in them by their congregants.

“Priests, Monsignor Hiester, all of them – they were trusted implicitly, as they should be,” he said. “They’re people that have said that they’re spreading the word of God.”

Even so, Stano said his faith remains.

“I’m Catholic by heritage,” he said. “My path in life has been to embrace love, is to embrace my faith, and choose a path of forgiveness.

“And perhaps one of these days the church will find their way back to God.”

Contact 9NEWS investigator Kevin Vaughan with tips about this or any story: kevin.vaughan@9news.com or 303-871-1862.