"So after he tried to anally rape you...": Chilling Details in John Doe AP v. Archdiocese of STL
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| Illustration by Vlad Alvarez |
| John Doe says Fr. Thomas Cooper, now deceased, performed oral sex on him and tried to anally rape him. |
This week's cover story , "Sins of the Father," dives into the case of a Mehlville man who's now going by the pseudonym, John Doe. He claims that in 2002, a horrifying memory flooded back to him: Father Thomas T. Cooper sexually abused him back in the summer of 1971.
Doe couldn't sue Fr. Cooper, who died in 2003. But he did sue the Archdiocese of St. Louis for failing to supervise the clergyman.
Then last March, a 22nd circuit court judge ruled that Doe's action fails, because any abuse would've happened off church property and outside of church control. (Read the excerpt after the jump...)
In the long lead-up to that decision -- unprecedented in its rationale here in Missouri, according to local attorneys and observers -- Church lawyers deposed Doe. That deposition, in all its graphic detail, is excerpted below (or click here to open the PDF):
Doedepo1
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