His faith is shaken to the point where he thinks of God and the church in separate sentences. She blames herself for not seeing what was happening in her own house, with the priest she trusted deeply, with her boys.
Arthur and Agnes Koldeway drove to Denver from their Loveland-area dairy farm Monday to speak for their son, John, a guide and outfitter in Alaska.
John Koldeway and another man, a John Doe, are the 12th and 13th people to file lawsuits against the Denver Roman Catholic Archdiocese alleging child sexual abuse at the hands of former priest Harold Robert White. John Koldeway’s brother, Tom, previously filed a lawsuit.
“My faith is shaken to the core,” Arthur Koldeway said at a news conference organized by the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests. “I feel like I have to disconnect the church from God.”
The lawsuit, like others, alleges that the archdiocese knew about other allegations against White before he molested John Koldeway, an altar boy at St. John the Evangelist parish in Loveland, from 1968 to 1972.
Arthur Koldeway also accuses White of sexually abusing his youngest daughter on skiing trips.
Agnes Koldeway sharply criticized former Archbishop J. Francis Stafford, who was promoted to cardinal and given a Vatican job after leaving Denver.
“Stafford was supposed to be our shepherd,” she said. “He chose not to say anything because of his aspirations.”
Fran Maier, chancellor of the archdiocese, defended Stafford, who in 1991 developed one of the first child-abuse prevention policies at a U.S. Catholic diocese.
“He was a man of integrity and character and took these maters extremely seriously and made dealing with them an issue from practically the first day he got here,” Maier said.
In the other lawsuit, White is accused of molesting a boy while he worked at St. Catherine of Siena parish in Denver in the early 1960s.
Over the weekend, a letter from Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput was read at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton parish in Fort Collins after its former pastor, the Rev. Timothy Joseph Evans, was criminally charged last week with child sex abuse.
Chaput underscored the archdiocese’s policies to prevent child abuse, asked parishioners to pray for Evans and others involved and asked anyone with information to contact authorities.
Staff writer Eric Gorski can be reached at 303-820-1698 or egorski@denverpost.com.
