Unforgiven

Not to worry, Burke told her. All that stuff was in the past. And besides, Roney was being watched.

Two weeks later, Roney received the highest honor of his long career: the Diocesan Distinguished Service Award for "50 years of priestly ministry to the People of God." The next day, he flew to Guatemala.

In fall 2001, Bishop Lucker, dying of melanoma, was replaced by John Nienstedt, a silver-haired, doctrinaire clergyman from Detroit.

Just a few months after Nienstedt started, the Boston Globe reported that the Archdiocese of Boston had, over the previous decade, quietly settled more than 70 cases of sexual molestation against its priests. The Globe's reporting confirmed what many had long suspected: There was an epidemic of priest sex abuse, and the church covered it up.

Amid the fallout, the new bishop, having established himself as a strict, detail-oriented administrator, ordered a fresh review of all priest sex abuse files in the diocese. New Ulm's sex abuse board also instituted a new policy: zero tolerance for priests confirmed to be child molesters.

On April 18, 2002, after conferring with the board, Nienstedt sent Roney a letter informing him that his priestly faculties had been suspended. "I very much regret the necessity of this canonical action, which you have brought about by your own activity," Nienstedt wrote. The bishop also asked that Roney return to New Ulm to discuss "what limited options are available for the future."

But Roney didn't fly home to face the stern taskmaster now running the show. The 81-year-old was in failing health, his heart and lungs giving out. Just a couple of months after Nienstedt's letter, doctors in Guatemala City discovered an aortic aneurism on Roney's abdomen. He refused an operation, preferring to spend his last months in his house across the street from the mission's school. He died the following winter.

Just months after Roney died, the church was sued by Jeff Anderson, a hard-nosed St. Paul lawyer with slicked gray hair who is among the preeminent clergy sex abuse lawyers in the country. Anderson had already sued the church once over Roney—in 1996, a male convicted of child abuse claimed that he had been abused as a boy by Roney. The case was quietly settled in 1998 with a $30,000 payout from the diocese.

This time, the cases involved women who alleged that Roney abused them while they were young, obedient parishioners in Willmar. As Anderson prepared to take their stories public, Bishop Nienstedt, realizing he had a full-fledged scandal on his hands, made a public statement.

In an August 2003 press release, the diocese acknowledged knowing about Roney's "alleged" history of sex abuse since 1987. It also noted the lawsuits stemming from "two women's allegations of sexual misconduct by Roney."

But even as the two women worked toward settlements with the diocese—they would settle two years after filing their suits, for undisclosed sums of money—Anderson was readying a fresh set of plaintiffs.

There were five of them, all women, each with her own terrible story. They accused Roney of everything from forcing his hands inside underpants to demanding oral, vaginal, and anal sex.
The years of abuse among them spanned a decade, from 1965 to 1975, and included two parishes.

Roney didn't act alone, the lawsuit alleged. The diocese had willfully turned a blind eye, allowing him to be around children despite a track record of sexually molesting them.

Acting on a tip, Anderson's associate Kathleen Stafford got in touch with the principal of the Catholic school in Willmar at the time Roney was there. Sister Virginia McCall declined to be interviewed for this story, but in an affidavit filed for the lawsuit, she wrote that she'd banned Roney from the school's playground and lunchroom after being alerted by another priest of allegations that Roney was rubbing up against girls in the school.

That priest was Francis Garvey. He was a member of the nascent but highly influential Priest Personnel Board, which advised the bishop on where priests were placed within the diocese.

So if Garvey knew about the abuse in 1970, why didn't the information reach the bishop until 1987? To find out, Stafford drove to Litchfield last April, where she took the deposition of the elderly Garvey at the Church of St. Philip.

Stafford asked the priest when he first heard reports of Roney sexually abusing girls.

It was in 1970, Garvey confirmed, when a girl's father came to his office at the Willmar State Hospital—he was a chaplain at the mental institution—and accused Roney of rubbing his groin against the man's daughter on the playground. Other parents had similar complaints, Garvey recalled the man telling him.

"Did you speak with any of the children?" Stafford asked the priest.

"No," he responded.

"Any of the other parents?"

"No."

Stafford pressed on: "So, what did you do in response?"