St. Charles priest accused of sex abuse
Kevin Heidtman has suffered in silence for years.
More recently, he’s gotten the courage to file a lawsuit against institutions he believes knowingly let himself and other youth be sexually abused by a priest in their employ.
Heidtman, 30 and now living on the West Coast, filed a lawsuit in Franklin County Common Pleas Court on July 5 stating that he was a freshman at St. Charles Preparatory School when Monsignor Thomas Bennett sexually molested him six times.
Heidtman and his attorney, Konrad Kircher, filed the suit against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Columbus, Bishop Frederick Campbell and St. Charles because Bennett died in 2008 after serving as a teacher at the allboys Catholic school in Bexley for more than 40 years. Heidtman, who has changed his last name since living in Columbus, was known only as John Doe in the lawsuit.
“The reason I decided to come forward and take this action is I think this is a fairly widespread problem,” Heidtman said. “What really bothers me is it’s still happening and, potentially because I didn’t say anything, probably happened to other students after me and that’s really hard to deal with.”
Heidtman, who said he was abused at age 14 during the 2002-03 school year, said Bennett molested him during detentions that he supervised on school grounds and that Heidtman served, some of which Bennett assigned to Heidtman.
Abuse fallout
The abuse haunted Heidtman for years, he said, leading him to fail out of high school and become addicted to methamphetamine and suffer panic attacks and anger. He’s now clean and trying to move on with his life.
“What happened at St. Charles has defined a lot of my life. I didn’t cope with it very well for a long time,” he said.
St. Charles Principal James Lower sent an email about the allegations to parents of current students in July. The email said Heidtman’s was the first accusation against Bennett the diocese had received.
Since news of Heidtman’s lawsuit came out Aug. 16, two other victims of Bennett and two witnesses to abuse by him have contacted Kircher, a partner at Rittgers and Rittgers in Lebanon in southwestern Ohio who specializes in child sexual-abuse cases. Their stories of abuse range from the 1960s to the 1980s, Kircher said.
Bennett was a U.S. history and economics teacher at St. Charles. Though known for being stern, a fall 2008 edition of the St. Charles Alumni magazine, The Cardinal, refers to him as one of the school’s “most beloved figures” and dedicated several pages to profiling him shortly after his death earlier that year.
Ignored reports
Heidtman said he told the dean at St. Charles in March 2003 about Bennett making him uncomfortable and was told to “suck it up.” He said he was molested one more time by Bennett after reporting it.
A few years ago, Heidtman said he reported it again — twice to the diocese and once to the school. The diocese didn’t respond and the school sent a form letter with a “noncommittal” apology and denying the allegations, so Heidtman decided to sue.
The lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages of at least $2 million, but Heidtman said he’s not concerned about the money. He wants the school to look into the allegations and not just “dismiss it as gossip.”
On Wednesday, Kircher said the defendant’s attorneys filed their second extension for time to prepare their answer to the suit.
Rob Schuler, of the diocese’s law firm, Kegler, Brown, Hill and Ritter, emailed a statement Wednesday that says Heidtman first reported the allegation to Lower in May, who told him it would be reported to the proper authorities and encouraged him to contact the diocese’s victim’s assistance coordinator. As he said he would, Heidtman reported the allegation to Franklin County Children Services.