SPRINGFIELD (MO)
Joplin Globe [Joplin MO]
September 19, 2024
By Jeff Lehr
Boys from Joplin and Carthage and a boy and a girl from Neosho are among 11 alleged victims of past sexual abuse by Catholic Church officials cited in a lawsuit filed last week against the Diocese of Springfield-Cape Girardeau.
The diocese and Bishop Edward Rice are listed as defendants in the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Springfield regarding purported abuse of children dating back as far as the late 1960s by six named and three unnamed priests, a monsignor, an unnamed youth pastor and an unnamed deacon.
The lawsuit states that the victims — all adults today — were children at the time of the abuse and suffered “shame, guilt, self-blame and depression” as a consequence. The plaintiffs are eight boys and three girls identified only by initials in the court petition.
Rice is being sued solely in his capacity as the chief executive officer and director of the diocese for purportedly knowing about the abuse, failing to report it and dealing with it through ineffective “treatment” and transfers of the offenders to other parishes where they would often reoffend.
Rice became bishop of the diocese in 2016.
Monsignor John Westhues, formerly of St. Mary’s Parish in Joplin, is accused of abusing a Joplin boy born in 1967 who attended the parish church and its elementary school and served as an altar boy for three or four years.
Westhues allegedly had inappropriate sexual contact with the boy on eight to 10 occasions, according to the lawsuit. The monsignor, who died in 2008, was never charged with any offense despite the boy having told his father about it. The lawsuit states that his father did not believe him and punished the boy, forcing him to hold a Bible up until he was too exhausted to do it any longer.
“One, multiple or all plaintiffs never contacted an attorney, told anyone else about their abuse or knew of their cause of action against defendants until recently,” the lawsuit states.
Some “blocked out the abuse and did not recall it until recently when the memories began flooding back.”
A Carthage boy born in 1968 purportedly suffered sexual abuse at the hands of an unnamed priest at St. Ann’s Church in Carthage, whom he as an adult could recall only as being heavy-set, of average height and with gray hair. The boy had been kicked out of a public school and was in the eighth grade at St. Ann’s when the priest sexually abused him, according to the lawsuit.
A man born in Neosho in 1960 has alleged that two priests associated with St. Canera’s Catholic Church in Neosho, the Rev. Thomas McCarthy and the Rev. Val Reker, abused him on several occasions between 1968 and 1970.
Reker would babysit him at the rectory from time to time and take advantage of the opportunity to bathe and molest him, while McCarthy would generally molest him in the priest’s own home, according to the lawsuit.
The Rev. John Harth is named as the alleged abuser of a girl born in 1979 who also attended St. Canera’s in Neosho. The court document states that when she was 9 or 10, Harth began taking an interest in her and would take her into a church side room and kiss and touch her inappropriately. The abuse continued for about three years, but she never disclosed it to anyone until she told her mother in 2019. The mother purportedly took the matter to the diocese in 2019 or thereabouts, but church officials never got back to her about it, according to the lawsuit.
The diocese issued a statement Monday in response to the lawsuit filed on behalf of the plaintiffs by Kansas City attorney Rebecca Randles.
The statement acknowledged the seriousness of the allegations but declined comment on their merit. The diocese said the new claims the lawsuit has brought “will be examined” and that the diocese “will continue to attend to those who have been harmed by abuse.”
“As a precaution, all clergy, employees and volunteers who are accused of abuse or misconduct involving minors or vulnerable adults may be placed on temporary administrative leave by the diocese,” the statement said, adding that a presumption of innocence should be accorded to those accused.
Other priests named in the suit are the Rev. Leonard Chambers, who served as a priest in 1968 at St. Peter the Apostle Parish in Joplin; the Rev. Michael McDevitt and the Rev. Thomas Reidy.
Chambers is accused of sexually abusing two altar boys at Our Lady of the Cove Catholic Church in Kimberling City, one in the 1980s and the other in the 1990s. He purportedly would ply altar boys with wine from time to time and then molest them.
The diocese had previously disclosed that Chambers had been accused of sexually abusing minors. He was assigned to a parish in Lebanon when he allegedly abused a minor in 1977-82. The allegations were brought forward in 1998 and 2013. Chambers was accused of molesting a teenage boy while assigned to a parish in Springfield. He was subsequently assigned to the parish in Pierce City and after that to St. Peter the Apostle in Joplin, and to a parish in Webb City, according to the lawsuit. He was found to have violated the restrictions he was under when he was again found alone with a minor. He was retired from ministry in 1998 and laicized — removed from the priesthood — in 2006.
McDevitt also is accused of using wine to engage in sexual intercourse with a girl under 10 years old in the late 1990s while she was attending Sacred Heart Church in Poplar Bluff.
A boy from Springfield purportedly was abused by Reidy and by an unnamed visiting priest while attending at St. Canera’s Catholic Church. Reidy, who was in charge of the altar boys, allegedly abused him for about two years when he was between the ages of 9 and 12.
A visiting priest, whose name the victim cannot recall, purportedly engaged in inappropriate sexual contact with the same boy in the church rectory and basement.
According to the diocese, Reidy, a monsignor, has been placed on administrative leave from his present duties as pastor at Immaculate Conception Church in Springfield.
Harth is retired and has had all his priestly functions revoked with the exception of celebrating Mass privately, according to the diocese. Reker died in 1987.
A similar suit was filed last week against the Diocese of Jefferson City and its bishop, alleging sexual abuse of a dozen more children by five other priests, only three of whom are named.
The court actions accuse the diocese and their bishops of failing to supervise their clergy and report the sexual abuse of children, breaching the special relationship of priests with children, the infliction of emotional distress on the victims, fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud in their handling of the issue, and misrepresentation of the status of the alleged abusers.
Jeff Lehr is a reporter for The Joplin Globe.