KANSAS CITY (MO)
The Kansas City Star
By JUDY L. THOMAS
The Kansas City Star
A wrongful-death lawsuit alleging that a boy took his life decades ago because of repeated sexual abuse by a Kansas City priest can proceed, a judge ruled this week.
The statute of limitations for wrongful death is three years in Missouri.
But in his order, Jackson County Circuit Court Judge Michael Manners held as valid the argument of the boys’ parents that the statute of limitations should be suspended because of the defendants’ cover-up, fraud and concealment of the priest’s alleged abuse of their son and other children.
The judge dismissed the parents’ other claims that the priest and the diocese deprived their son of “a material chance of surviving.”
Don and Rosemary Teeman filed the case against Msgr. Thomas O’Brien and the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph last September after a man who served as an altar boy with their son, Brian, told them of the alleged abuse.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.