Category:Tennessee Dioceses
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Tennessee Dioceses General
Diocese of Knoxville
Diocese of Knoxville Founded on 7 June 1988, Pope John Paul II named Father Anthony J. O’Connell as founding bishop who served there for 10 years, 1988-98.
Diocese of Knoxville abuse One priest had been accused of sexual abuse up to January 2003. There have been no allegations of sex abuse by priests, but Bishop Anthony O’Connell of Palm Beach FL, who admitted abusing a seminarian in Missouri decades earlier.
- Dixon allegation Former priest Christopher Dixon told a newspaper in Missouri that he had been abused when he was a 15-year-old seminary student. Dixon said he had gone to Anthony O’Connell for advice after being molested by two other priests. Dixon went on to say that O’Connell had abused him several times over the next two years, under the guise of spiritual guidance.
(alphabetical listing)
[1 offender identified, none listed]
No data
- See also McKeown case
- See also O’Connell affair
- See also Richards affair
Diocese of Memphis
Diocese of Memphis Appeared to have largely escaped the sexual abuse scandal having spent about $10,000 for counseling and therapeutic services for victims, and no related lawsuits had been filed until July 2004.
(alphabetical listing)
[NK offenders identified, 5 listed]
Duran affair Rev. Juan Carlos Duran was accused of sexually abusing a boy when his parents told church officials, 2000.The diocese took action against the priest but did not report the allegations to agencies that might launch a criminal investigation. Duran, who is no longer a priest, was sent by the Dominican order to an undisclosed medical facility in Maryland for treatment. Also charges in St. Louis. Sued.
Emala affair Rev. Walter Emala accused of abuse. Removed 1975.
Mickey affair Rev. Richard Mickey, ordained as a priest in 1988, pastor at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Jackson. Bishop Steib appointed him to be the Episcopal Vicar in April 2004. In July 2004, Ponticello was also appointed Director of Villa Vianney, the Diocese of Memphis' residence for senior and retired priests. Mickey was accused of abusing twin brothers Blain and Blair Chambers in 1980 when they were students at Bishop Byrne High School in Memphis, and Mickey worked as a counselor to one of the teens and a religion instructor to the other, lawsuit filed in Circuit Court in Memphis July 2004. Mickey denied the allegations.
Nguyen affair Rev. Edward Nguyen served as chaplain at St. Peter Villa. He had also served at several local parishes, including Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Germantown, St. Ann in Bartlett and St. Paul the Apostle in Memphis, and managed ministries within the Vietnamese Catholic community. He was accused of abusing a woman between 1994 and 1999. The diocese said he has been relieved of duty pending an investigation by a church review board. Diocese of Memphis reached financial settlements in three cases against Father Joseph Nguyen, 18 June 2007
- Jane Doe No. 1 lawsuit 23-year-old woman listed as now living in California claimed Nguyen molested her between 1994 and 1999, filed 14 September 2006.
- Jane Doe No. 2 lawsuit Catholic Diocese of Memphis is accused in a lawsuit filed on behalf of an unidentified 21-year-old woman, of covering up sexual abuse by a priest in the late 1990s. The suit accuses the diocese of failing to protect the woman from a known child abuser and that it took steps to conceal the abuse. The suit seeks $10 million in damages, 28 September 2006.
- Jane Doe No. 3 lawsuit Alleged multiple counts of sexual abuse by Rev. Joseph Nguyen between 1997 and 1999. The Vietnamese-American woman who lives in Memphis claimed the abuse began after she underwent counseling from the priest following the death of her younger brother in 1996. The lawsuit seeks damages in excess of $10 million.
St. Charles affair Rev. Paul W. St. Charles, worked as a priest in Nashville in the 1960s before moving to Memphis. He also worked in Union City, in Obion County of northwest Tennessee, in 1974. St. Charles engaged in sexual misconduct involving a minor, retired from the Diocese of Memphis in 1986. Allegation was brought to the church's attention in 2002. St. Charles denies any accusations of sexually abusing anyone. Removed 2004.
Diocese of Nashville
Diocese of Nashville Encompasses more than 50 churches and missions in the Midstate.
Diocese of Nashville abuse Three priests had been accused of sexual abuse up to January 2003. National Audit reported seven priests were credibly accused of abuse of minors and 30 victims contacted the diocese, and the diocese paid a little over $200,000 in counseling and charitable assistance to victims but had not entered into any settlements with victims of abuse, reported 13 February 2004. Edward U. Kmiec (later bishop of Buffalo) refused to release the names of accused priests because “it sometimes stimulates only a prurient interest” and because he did not think releasing names was necessarily good for victims of sex abuse.
(alphabetical listing)
[7 offenders identified, 7 listed]
Anon priest I Kathleen Rankin was sexually molested in Nashville 50 years ago. “I've gone all this time thinking I was the only one. It destroyed me.”
Anon priest II Annette M. Alix said her son was raped by a priest while he was a child.
Dickman affair Rev. Ron Dickman, principal at Father Ryan High School one of the premier Catholic schools in the Midstate, is alleged to have molested students. His accuser, Mark Cunningham, a prominent Catholic business man, says church leaders have been trying to discredit him for speaking out. Dickman is accused of abusing another student at Father Ryan and was forced to resign as Ryan principal in 1987. Resigned from the Diocese of Nashville as a priest in active ministry, 1 December 1991.
- [Another priest] Cunningham reported a key allegation to his parish priest that Cunningham’s brother, John Cunningham Jr. was molested by another priest while attending Father Ryan, late 1970s. Mark Cunningham said his brother was on his death bed with AIDS in 1991 when John Jr. told him he had been abused.
- Giacosa statement Mark Cunningham said he was greatly upset and related what his brother told him to go to the Rev. Charles Giacosa, who was then his parish priest. Cunningham said he demanded that Dickman be removed from the priesthood. According to Cunningham, Giacosa told him that it wasn't the first complaint about Dickman and that Dickman's departure as principal at Father Ryan four years earlier had been forced because of a similar complaint, October 1991.
- Church denial In December 2002, the diocese issued a statement by Giacosa, who said he was “surprised and angered” to read Cunningham’s comments in the 6 October 2002 article in The Tennessean that “'claimed I had been told that Ron Dickman abused John Cunningham Jr. while he was a student at Father Ryan High School...Mark told me that John Jr. had told him about a recent sexual encounter between himself and Ron Dickman,” part of Giacosa's statement read. “This was the first time that I had become aware of a sexual relationship between Ron Dickman and John Cunningham Jr. I have no recollection whatsoever of Mark Cunningham telling me of abuse involving his brother while in high school.” “The church is going to have to decide if it’s backing Dickman or backing the truth,”' Mark Cunningham said. “What's it going to be? Does it protect child molesters or does it protect children?”
Haas affair Rev. Paul Fredrick Haas (d. 1979), a biology teacher, was accused by David Brown, a 15 year-old sophomore at Nashville's Father Ryan High School in the 1960’s of raping him at Camp Marymount in middle Tennessee. “And what's he saying to me as he's doing it? ‘You know this is a sin, but God knows my needs, and besides I love you.’” David Brown approached the diocese in 1996, in search of answers and an apology, church leaders paid him a few thousand dollars and asked him to sign a form releasing the diocese from all responsibility in his case, promising never to sue and never to discuss the agreement with anyone. The diocese says other victims have come forward to say Haas abused them.
McKeown case Bishop Kmiec was accused in a lawsuit of failing to act after learning in the mid- to late 1990s that a suspended pedophile priest was continuing to socialize with boys at a church and a Catholic school. Therapists had warned the diocese in writing that the Rev. Edward J. McKeown should be kept away from adolescents. Bishop Kmiec has acknowledged giving parishioners a “misleading” statement about how many times his predecessor was warned about the priest before suspending him. McKeown left the priesthood on 1 March 1989. He was then accused of sexual abuse with two boys, 1994-98 in a mobile home park where he lived after he was forced to leave the priesthood. Finally he gained temporary custody of a troubled teen in the late 1990s, and was charged with raping him and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Pratt affair Rev. James Pratt, Jesuit, accused of abuse, removed 2003.
Richards affair Rev. Franklin T. Richards (Frank), a priest in the Diocese of Nashville, who rose to become principal of Knoxville Catholic High School. He and another priest, Edward J. McKeown, confessed to sexually molesting dozens of young boys during the 1980s. Richards told Nashville police in 1999 that he and McKeown took students to a farm, owned by Richards' family, where the priests would sodomize and sexually assault them. Richards said he had molested 25 boys. McKeown has admitted to molesting and raping at least 22. Richards left the priesthood on 1 March 1989 and became a restaurateur, as the co-owner of the Forum Bar and Grille in the Forum Place in West Palm Beach which intended to make it a “gathering place of distinction for the gay community.” No legal action due to statute of limitations
- Richards cover-up Richards told police that the church paid settlements to victims' families to keep them quiet. Court records released in 2002, reported in The Nashville Tennessean, show that church officials covered for the two priests, and repeatedly transferred them to assignments working with children.
