A recent report says two Catholic priests long associated with the University of Notre Dame preyed on male students and other young adults over a number of years — but victims and other critics say church and school officials haven’t come clean about all of the sexual misconduct they know about.
Two priests long affiliated with the University of Notre Dame groomed and sexually abused young men at the storied Catholic college and elsewhere over many years dating to the 1980s.
And the clerics — both with ties to the Chicago area — were allowed to stay in ministry long after church and school officials were said to have been aware of some of the potential misconduct.
Those are the central takeaways from interviews with the Chicago Sun-Times and a recently released report commissioned by Notre Dame detailing accusations of sexual misconduct by the Rev. Thomas King, who is now retired, and the Rev. David Porterfield, who died in November.
As much as the report reveals, it also raises questions that Notre Dame, the Catholic religious order that helps oversee it and the lawyer hired by the school to investigate will not answer — even though school officials made a public apology to victims and pledged greater accountability and transparency.
The report focused largely on the conduct of the priests while they were at Notre Dame and its sister school, Holy Cross College, both near South Bend, Indiana, and overseen by their order of priests and religious brothers, the Congregation of Holy Cross.
King had been the rector of Notre Dame’s Zahm Hall dormitory from 1980 to 1997, a period in which he was accused of subjecting at least 15 Notre Dame University and Holy Cross College students to a “scheme” in which he had them strip naked or nearly so under the guise of needing to weigh them out of concern for their health, the report says.
The report also found that “multiple individuals, some of whom were weighed, were sexually touched or assaulted by Fr. King, both at Notre Dame and after he left.”
King attended high school at what’s now called Notre Dame College Prep in Niles, where “he taught history, Latin and theology” after he was ordained a priest in 1969 and “also served as the school’s athletic director until his departure in 1979,” according to the report.
King’s religious order oversaw the high school at the time, and the report says: “We know of no complaints made during his time there.”
The lawyer who completed the report was hired by the university in September as the college faced mounting activism from some alumni. The investigation initially was focused on King, then expanded to also include Porterfield as people familiar with his misconduct pressed forward.
Continue reading at the Chicago Sun-Times