MINNESOTA
Winona Daily News
By Jerome Christenson jchristenson@winonadailynews.com
She stood alone under a cloudy sky to speak for the victims and for herself.
“I am a victim of rape by a priest,” Megan Peterson said.
She was 14, she said, when she was first raped by the Rev. Joseph Jeyapaul, her parish priest in Greenbush, Minn. The abuse went on for 10 months, she said, until Jeyapaul fled to his native India. Charges were filed against Jeyapaul and extradition proceedings have begun. Peterson and the Diocese of Crookston reached a civil settlement last summer.
Peterson, now 22 and a student at Winona State University, was at the Pastoral Center of the Diocese of Winona Tuesday afternoon to tell her story and ask the bishop and diocesan officials to work for and with people sexually exploited and abused by Catholic clergy and religious. She was there as part of a May Day visit by members of SNAP — Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests — to the headquarters of Roman Catholic dioceses across Minnesota.
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