One priest reported 200 sexual encounters, including some with students at St. John’s University and prep school.
Another recorded the names of dozens of boys he brought to a cabin, some of whom he sexually abused. Another abuser was paid $30,000 by St. John’s Abbey to support him as he left the clergy.
These are among findings from the first batch of personnel files from St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville made public Tuesday. The abbey was required to release its internal files on priests credibly accused of child sex abuse as part of a lawsuit settled earlier this year. It marks the first time the abbey — implicated in clergy abuse cases for two decades — has opened its confidential files.
The files include the abuse accusations, abbey response, and psychological assessments of the men from roughly the 1960s to a few years ago. That includes a 2012 assessment of the Rev. Finian McDonald, who told a psychologist that he had about 200 sexual encounters as a priest.