Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests held a news conference Tuesday afternoon in Columbia, demanding Bishop W. Shawn McKnight, of the Catholic Diocese of Jefferson City, disclose that a convicted serial child-molesting cleric worked at two area churches.
SNAP members Tuesday pointed out a cleric abuse report released in California last week states, for a brief time in 1985, Fr. Fredrick A. Lenczycki worked at Our Lady of Lourdes in Columbia, and temporarily took the place of a St. James priest who had been hospitalized with lung cancer.
Lenczycki was possibly the first U.S. priest deemed a "sexually violent predator," said David Clohessy, the St. Louis volunteer SNAP director.
Lenczycki was convicted of charges of aggravated criminal sexual assault against a child in 2004 for abusing three boys in the Joliet, Illinois, area. He received a five-year prison sentence.
In a statement Tuesday, the diocese said it has no documentation indicating Lenczycki requested permission to serve as a priest within it.
"SNAP conducted a media conference today using misinformation, suggesting the Diocese of Jefferson City is hiding facts about a known sexual predator who was in the diocese in 1985," the diocese said in the written statement.
The diocese's statement said that within a handwritten letter in the report - which was published by an attorney and allegedly in the files of the Diocese of Joliet - Lenczycki appears to indicate he was living in the rectory at Our Lady of Lourdes in Columbia and preparing to celebrate Mass at St. James, about 100 miles south of the city. The diocese was unaware of the letters until a reporter pointed them out.
The diocese added it had not received any allegations against Lenczycki.
"His name has never surfaced publicly in Missouri. It would be surprising if he had victimized no one here," Clohessy said. "He's been accused in every state he's been in."
Many predator clerics moved slowly and carefully, and extensively groomed their victims over many years before they "crossed a boundary" and began abusing children, he continued.
Lenczycki, Clohessy said, doesn't seem to be the type of person to move slowly - that he was much more aggressive.
Revelations about Cardinal Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, D.C., who was suspended in July over allegations he sexually abused seminary students and later retired, demonstrated an egregious power abuse, McKnight said in August. That scandal and a Pennsylvania grand jury report released in August led him to direct staff to compare the names listed on the report to local clergy records. Among the names was John "Jack" Pender, who was listed as having left the Diocese of Scranton (Pennsylvania) in 1968 and was assigned to the Missouri parishes of St. Robert and Crocker in the 1970s and 1980s.
There were also no reports of Pender - who died in 2009 - having behaved inappropriately toward children in Missouri, the Diocese of Jefferson City said.
The Pennsylvania report spurred the Catholic Archdiocese of St. Louis to ask Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley to investigate any potential clergy abuse. The Jefferson City diocese was the next to voluntarily join the statewide investigation.
"The Diocese of Jefferson City has a vigorous effort to encourage victims of sexual abuse by clergy to come forward for healing," Tuesday's statement from the diocese said.
The diocese's efforts to reach out to victims include: Each week, publishing information at diojeffcity.org and its newspaper letting people know how and where to report abuse. Letting people know how to reach the diocese's victims assistance coordinator, Nancy Hoey, at 573-694-3199 or [email protected].
The efforts include the bishop's order - which happened immediately after his ordination - to conduct an independent review of all files of living clergy and seminarians in the diocese. The review found no active ministry with violations of Catholic bishops' Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.
McKnight is also in the midst of a series of listening sessions to hear from Catholics to learn how they think the church can be more accountable and transparent to survivors.
The bishop should do more, Clohessy said.
"The bishop can go to every single parish where Lenczycki and Pender served here. They can go there and say, 'He was here from this time to this time; please ask your friends and relatives to contact Josh Hawley or local law enforcement,'" Clohessy said.
Victims, he said, can then get into therapy.