WASHINGTON (DC)
The Hoya
March 15, 2019
by Myroslav Dobroshynskyi
In 1983, Fr. Thomas M. Gannon, S.J., received the faculty member of the year award from Loyola University Chicago for his work as chair of the sociology department. The same year, Gannon left Loyola to become a professor at Georgetown University and the director of the Woodstock Theological Center in Lauinger Library — a move that came after Gannon sexually abused a minor at a church in Highland, Ind., that year.
That accusation, deemed credible by the U.S. Midwest Province of the Society of Jesus in 2018, is one of several against Gannon, both before and after his time at Georgetown from 1983 to 1986. Gannon, who died in 2011, also sexually abused minors while teaching at an Ohio high school in the 1960s and at two parishes in the 1990s, according to the Midwest Province.
While he was chair of the sociology department at Loyola, Gannon — who would later teach sociology to undergraduates at Georgetown — allegedly sexually assaulted and harassed at least two graduate students, allegations that were reported at the time to Loyola administrators in the Jesuit order, but were not public until now.
Gannon taught Georgetown undergraduate classes on comparative social structures and the sociology of religion from 1983 to 1986, according to archives of class schedules from those years. During his time at Georgetown, Gannon lived in a Jesuit residence two blocks from the front gates and worked as the director of the Woodstock Theological Center, a research center located in the basement of Lauinger Library that was managed by the Maryland Province of the Jesuit order until the center closed in 2013.
Georgetown University, which first learned of allegations against Gannon from the Midwest Province’s report Dec. 17, 2018, has not publicly acknowledged his past work on campus.
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