New lawsuit filed against Catholic church in Mont.

HELENA, Mont. — Ten people filed a lawsuit Wednesday claiming they were sexually abused as children by Roman Catholic priests and nuns in central and eastern Montana, including a priest who was on a board that reviews allegations of child sex abuse for the church.

It is the third sex-abuse lawsuit filed against the Catholic church in Montana since last year and the first against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Great Falls-Billings.

The lawyers who filed the lawsuit in Cascade County District Court also represent about 160 other alleged victims in one of the two claims against the Catholic Diocese of Helena, which covers the western part of the state.

The 10 unnamed plaintiffs are now adults and say the abuse took place from the 1960s to the 1980s at schools, missions, churches and homes in St. Xavier, Livingston, Absarokee, Great Falls, Hays, Wolf Point and Hardin.

Diocesan officials should have known about the abuse but gave the priests and nuns unfettered access to the children, the lawsuit alleges. Instead of removing those clergy members once victims began coming forward, the diocese intimidated the victims into keeping their silence, said Tim Kosnoff, a Seattle attorney representing the plaintiffs.

"They continue to pay lip service to protecting children, all the while covering up accusations of sexual abuse," Kosnoff said Wednesday at a news conference in Great Falls.

The Rev. Jay Peterson, the diocese's vicar general, released a statement Wednesday that said the diocese has a zero-tolerance sex abuse policy and that some of the allegations involve Jesuit clergy that were assigned to the diocese years ago.

Peterson compared this lawsuit to the one against the Helena diocese, in which the plaintiffs' attorneys "make sweeping allegations and then try these claims in a court of public opinion in hopes of generating new potential claimants."

One of the priests accused in the lawsuit, the Rev. Ted Szudera, was one of seven members of the diocese's independent review board that advises the bishop in his assessment of allegations of sexual abuse of minors.

One plaintiff, identified by his initials T.B., alleges that Szudera abused him as a teenage altar boy in 1978 and 1979 when Szudera was a priest in Livingston.

A biography by the diocese says Szudera was ordained in 1977 and is the pastor of St. Mark's Church in Belt and of missions in Monarch, Raynesford and Centerville.