Jefferson City, USA - A man who claimed he was sexually abused as a high school student in the mid-1980s cannot sue a Catholic religious order because he waited too long to do so, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled today.
The ruling shot down an attempt to pursue a decades-after-the-fact lawsuit on grounds that the abuse victim only recently realized the sexual nature of what he was led to believe was a psychological experiment.
Robert Visnaw alleged he was abused by former school administrator William Mueller during his senior year at St. John Vianney High School in Kirkwood in 1984 and 1985. He is one of about two dozen men who have sued various affiliates of the Roman Catholic Church in Missouri, Colorado and Texas for abuse allegedly inflicted by Mueller dating back more than four decades.
Visnaw said that in four separate incidents, Mueller forced him to hyperventilate to the point of unconsciousness, asked him to strip to his underwear, massaged his genitals, blindfolded him and held a knife to his throat, the Supreme Court said. But Visnaw claims he didn't recall the sexual details of the incidents until 2005.
He sued the Marianist Province, which sponsors the school, in 2006.
The timing of the lawsuit was pivotal to whether it could proceed.
Missouri law requires lawsuits to be filed within five years of when the damage from a wrongdoing "is sustained and capable of ascertainment." For victims who are minors, that clock can be delayed until they turn 21.
The issue before the Supreme Court was whether that five-year clock started ticking in 1988, when Visnaw turned 21, or in 2005, when he claimed he first realized his repressed memories of sexual abuse.
In a 2006 ruling in a separate case against the Marianist Province, the Missouri Supreme Court allowed a man to move forward with a lawsuit alleging he did not recall abuse he suffered during 1973 to 1975 until he began receiving treatment for brain cancer in 2000.
Advocates for abuse victims had hoped that case would open the door for more people to sue.
But in Visnaw's case, the state Supreme Court noted that he admitted that he has always remembered the non-sexual nature of his abuse. That conduct provided sufficient opportunity to realize he had been injured and to sue earlier, Judge Richard Teitelman said in a unanimous ruling.
An attorney for the Marianist Province did not immediately return a telephone call Tuesday.
Visnaw's attorney, Dan Craig, of Kansas City, said his client has few legal options remaining. Craig said he also is representing two others whose repressed memory lawsuits against the Catholic order had been dismissed in St. Louis court on similar grounds.
"The gist of the opinion really is that being tied up, being blindfolded, that that should be enough to tip you off that you're being harmed," Craig said.
Because Mueller had told the students he had to do some weird stuff as part of an experiment, Craig said, it wasn't unreasonable for those people to not realize they had been abused until they recalled the sexual nature of the events years later.