Survivors file to sue the Pope and Vatican over years of sexual abuse

The Vatican and two high ranking Cardinals have been filed with court papers on behalf of the Chicago abuse survivor of a now dead priest, Lawrence Murphy, in Milwaukee.

Attorney for the survivors, Jeff Anderson, filed the court papers with relation to decades-old accusations of sexual abuse which occurred at St. John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Anderson and his clients claim that the Vatican along with top officials knew about the accusations of sexual abuse in the school and called off internal punishment against the priest.

Anderson released a statement on Wednesday which read "it will be interesting to see what new tactic for delay they will come up with. One would hope that we could expect reasonable cooperation.”

Terry Kohut, the plaintiff in the case (John Doe 16 v. Holy See), was a student at St. John’s in the 1970’s and one of many deaf students sexually abused by the director of the school, Father Lawrence Murphy.

Anderson added “One reason Murphy was able to molest dozens of kids is because U.S. and Milwaukee church officials refused to challenge the Vatican to take strong action against predator priests. Now perhaps we can begin to get some answers of why this tragedy was allowed to happen.”

According the Associated Press the Vatican's US-based attorney, Jeffrey Lena, did not respond to their emails on the issue.

In addition to this case, Anderson has another case against the Holy See (John V. Doe v. Holy See) which is in the United States District Court for the District of Oregon.