The Diocese of New Ulm referred all questions about Roney to Thomas Wieser, the lawyer representing it in this case. Weiser rejects the idea that Garvey's knowing about the allegations against Roney implicates the diocese. As a hospital chaplain, Garvey was an employee of the state, not an agent of the church, Wieser argues.
In addition, Wieser says, three of the four women in the suit—the fifth settled this summer for an undisclosed sum—don't even have legal standing as plaintiffs. State law stipulates that victims of sexual abuse have no more than six years to come forward after the abuse occurs or after they remember it, and the three all acknowledge knowing of the abuse for decades.
Courtesy of Jeff Anderson and Associates, P.A.
Father David Roney
Related Content
More About
But no matter the outcome of the case—there is a hearing on statute of limitation issues scheduled for later this month—the discovery process has brought to light troubling new information about Roney's last decade in San Lucas Toliman.
Upon his arrival in Guatemala in 1994, Roney wasted little time ingratiating himself with the children there. One girl in particular attracted his attention. Sabina, whose mother had died and whose father was unable to take care of her, was only two years old when Roney moved to town, according to an internal church memo turned over by the diocese. Within months, rumors swirled about Roney's relationship with the girl. Had she moved into his house? Was he trying to adopt her?
By early 1995, the scuttlebutt reached Sister Sandra Spencer, a nun who had spent years at the mission, but had since moved back to the States. She called Burke to relay the disturbing stories she'd been hearing. Burke sought to put her at ease. There was no truth to any of the rumors, he assured her. "She does not live there, let alone with Father Roney, especially not in his room," Burke wrote the nun, according to another of his memos obtained in the lawsuit.
But Spencer wasn't so sure. She also called Bishop Lucker, who in a handwritten note wrote that "this new report of his 'raising' this little girl is a concern to me."
Bonnie Iverson, a Willmar parishioner who has had several extended stays at the mission, declined to be interviewed for this story. But in an affidavit obtained by Stafford, she is less reticent. "I learned that Father Roney was planning to adopt a six-year-old orphan girl," she wrote, adding that the girl "spent her days at Father Roney's home, along with his housekeeper."
Iverson, knowing of Roney's taste for young girls in Willmar, was "very upset" when she found this out. "I was afraid that something inappropriate might be going on," she wrote.
It isn't known exactly what Roney did with little Sabina, but there is this: She stands to inherit most of his worldly possessions—$10,000—on her 18th birthday, in 2010.
