A priest prosecution case with wrinkles

His diocese paid, lips were sealed, he considers it all behind him, but the homosexual-rape victim wants him off the street, wherever he is.

Eck was drunk when he brought the car back that night, he said, and Ericksen told him that rather than go home and face his parents, he could sleep it off in his spare bedroom.

That night, Eck said, Ericksen raped him.

He is Paul Eck, age 17 when he says the rape happened. The man he says did it is the Rev. Tom Ericksen, then of the Superior Wis. diocese. It happened in 1983.  Eck’s complaint, together with that of his nephew, James Eck, age 8 or 9 when he says Ericksen began touching him sexually, was settled in 1989 for $3 million.

It was the standard handling of an abuse case. But this one has arisen again. The Ecks want Ericksen, long since out of the priesthood and living outside Wisconsin, including in Minnesota — where he worked for 20 years as an AT&T customer service specialist and was a member of AT&T’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employee association — brought to criminal trial.

“He needs to be taken off the streets because he’s a pedophile,” Paul Eck said of Ericksen. “I guarantee you that there are people before and after me that have been molested. This is not all of a sudden something you do in a short amount of time.”

The present bishop is prohibited from discussing the case. The local prosecutor is not responding to the Ecks’ request to arrest Ericksen, whose move out of the state “stops the clock” on expiration of arrestability, according to Ecks’ lawyer.

However, the Duluth News-Tribune notes that the Wisconsin Supreme Court is considering an appeal by a Jesuit priest — Donald McGuire, of Chicago — who was convicted in 2006 of assaulting two teenagers in the late 1960s.