Sundborg and the Very Rev. Patrick J. Lee, head of the Oregon province, denied that they knew of sexual wrongdoing or were involved in covering up wrongdoing by priests in Alaska, although the order has paid millions of dollars in recent years to settle sexual abuse claims in Alaska.
Faced with rising abuse lawsuits, the Fairbanks diocese filed for bankruptcy protection in March.
Lawsuits are also being prepared on behalf of 60 other men and women accusing Jesuits in remote northern Alaska outposts of abusing those people when they were children and teenagers from the late 1940s through 2001, said Kenneth S. Roosa, a lawyer from Anchorage, Alaska.
During that time, according to the lawsuit filed by Roosa in Superior Court in Bethel, Alaska, "Native villages in the state of Alaska were essentially a 'dumping ground' for Jesuit priests unsuited to serve anywhere else in the Jesuit organization."
An investigator in those and similar cases in Alaska, Patrick J. Wall of Newport Beach, Calif., said 28 Jesuit priests accused of sexual misconduct against young parishioners in previously resolved lawsuits,pending lawsuits and others which have yet to be filed were sent to the Fairbanks Diocese from 10 other provinces, including four overseas.
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