MN--Group praises Lutheran abuse victim for new lawsuit
For immediate release: Monday, Dec. 14, 2015
Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those abused by Priests (314 566 9790, [email protected])
We applaud the brave woman who is suing an abusive Minnesota youth minister and shining a light on child sex crimes and cover ups in Protestant denominations.
She reports having been repeatedly sexually violated when she was 12 and a member of the Zion Lutheran Church in Hopkins, Minnesota. The alleged predator is Rev. John Huchthausen who reportedly arrived at the Church in 1974 after being as a missionary in the Philippines. He appears to have stayed at the church until 1979.
We hope others who saw, suspected or suffered clergy sex crimes or cover ups in Protestant churches will come forward, expose wrongdoers, protect kids and call police.
We share the concern voiced by Doe’s attorneys: that relatively fewer women who were abused as girls seek justice than men who were abused by boys. We urge every single person who was raped or molested as innocent kids or vulnerable adults to use the courts to warn parents, police, prosecutors and the public about clerics who commit or conceal sexual violence.
The new civil suit was filed in Hennepin County.
(SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is the world’s oldest and largest support group for clergy abuse victims. SNAP was founded in 1988 and has more than 20,000 members. Despite the word “priest” in our title, we have members who were molested by religious figures of all denominations, including nuns, rabbis, bishops, and Protestant ministers. Our website is SNAPnetwork.org)
Contact - David Clohessy (314-566-9790 cell, [email protected], [email protected]), Barbara Dorris (314-503-0003 cell, [email protected]), Frank Meuers of Plymouth MN, SNAP director Southern Minnesota (952-334-5180, [email protected]), Verne Wagner of Duluth, SNAP director Northern Minnesota (218-340-1277, [email protected])
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