JESUIT PRIESTS NAMED IN SEX ABUSE SUITE (Filed on behald of 2 disabled men)

According to court records and interviews, two mentally disabled men in the 50s who live and work at a Jesuit retreat were sexually abused by members of the clergy for at least five years.  Brother Charles Leonard Connor, 80, was convicted last year of committing a lewd act on one victim and is free after six months of home detention.  Another Jesuit, The Rev. Edward Thomas Burke, also 80, admitted to his superior two years ago that he engaged in sexual misconduct with the other victim.  Connor and Burke are among four Jesuits named as defendants in a lawsuit charging that the mentally impaired men were subjected to repeated acts of sodomy, molestation and false imprisonment at Sacred Heart Jesuit Center.

(Los Gatos, California)