BishopAccountability.org
	New Catholic Church Sex Abuse Claims Surface in Nashville By Jared Allen City Paper [Nashville TN] April 5, 2007 http://www.nashvillecitypaper.com/index.cfm?section=9&screen=news&news_id=55517 Nearly 30-year-old allegations of sexual abuse against a former Nashville priest surfaced just last month when a Hermitage man filed a $10 million civil lawsuit against the Nashville Diocese, claiming it failed to protect him against a priest with a known history of sexual abuse. The man named as the plaintiff in the lawsuit, filed in Davidson County Circuit Court, is identified only as C.S, now 43 years old. According to C.S.'s complaint, between the ages of 12 and 14, he was sexually abused by then-Father Edward McKeown on approximately 10 to 15 separate occasions. The complaint alleges that while he served at St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church in Lenoir City, Tenn., McKeown repeatedly provided C.S. and other minor boys with "liquor to the point of intoxication," made them play games of strip poker and become fully nude, and showed C.S. homosexual and heterosexual pornography. McKeown, who served in several parishes across Tennessee beginning in 1970, was removed from the priesthood in 1989 upon allegations of sexual abuse of underage boys. None of those allegations resulted in any criminal charges. In 1999, however, McKeown was charged with the 1995 rape of an underage boy. He was given 25 years in prison, a sentence he is still serving. Court records from that case show that Metro police and Davidson County prosecutors alleged that McKeown admitted to molesting as many as 30 boys, some during the time he was teaching at Father Ryan High School in Nashville. In 2000, the rape victim and another Nashville boy brought a civil lawsuit against the Nashville Diocese, claiming it likewise failed to protect them from McKeown. John Does 1 and 2, as they were identified in the case, had also claimed the Diocese was responsible for the abuse they suffered at the hands of McKeown, even though the alleged abuse occurred from 1994-1998, after McKeown had been forced from the church. Circuit Court Judge Walter Kurtz originally dismissed the 2000 civil lawsuit, ruling the Nashville Diocese could not be held responsible for abuse that took place after McKeown left the church. The State Supreme Court, however, eventually overturned that ruling, deciding unanimously in 2005 that Nashville church officials could be held responsible because evidence showed they had direct knowledge of instances of abuse committed by McKeown and others, and that they failed to prevent McKeown from molesting other boys outside the church but inside the Nashville community. In December 2005, the two plaintiffs settled the case with the Nashville Diocese, receiving an undisclosed monetary reward. The last time the Nashville Diocese was named in a suit arising from the actions of the former Father McKeown was last year, when an anonymous male born in 1977 alleged that in 1988 McKeown, who was then a priest at St. Ignatius of Antioch, repeatedly molested and abused him until 1993. Davidson County Circuit Court Judge Hamilton Gayden dismissed the suit at the request of the Diocese, which had argued that the statute of limitations had long since expired on the sexual abuse claims. The statute of limitations on such civil claims is one year in Tennessee. C.S.'s attorneys, however, believe they still have a case, arguing that the statute of limitations has yet to even begin on such cases because the Nashville Diocese is still withholding information relevant to various instances of sexual abuse. "The lawsuit is seeking to hold the Diocese of Nashville responsible for fraudulently concealing McKeown's sexual abuse of minors, and what we're specifically seeking to do is go back to when these allegations occurred and show that the Diocese knew that McKeown was a predator and didn't do anything to stop it," one of C.S.'s lawyers, Robert Kurtz of Stanley and Kurtz in Knoxville, said in an interview Wednesday. "We believe that the statute of limitations shouldn't run until these victims are made aware of the Diocese's conduct and knowledge," Kurtz said, saying he has at least one additional sexual abuse case ready to go against the Nashville Diocese. Nashville Diocese spokesman Rick Musacchio declined to discuss the latest lawsuit, saying the Diocese has yet to be served with the complaint and was unfamiliar with its contents. In December 2003, the Nashville Diocese was found to be in full compliance with the Roman Catholic Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, which was adopted by the previous year by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in response to the church sex abuse scandal that had erupted in Boston and that spread across the nation. On Wednesday, Musacchio said that the Nashville Diocese's "safe environment" program, designed to provide abuse victims with a safe and trusted outlet with which to come forward, has been well regarded. He also noted the Diocese employs a full-time victim assistance coordinator.
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