Diocese settles sex assault claim

MILFORD » The Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut agreed Thursday to pay a settlement to a local woman who claimed she was sexually assaulted at St. Peter’s Church when she was 12 by the pastor’s adult son.

The terms of the settlement were not disclosed. The settlement was reached as the case was to go to trial before a jury in Superior Court here against the diocese, the church and its former pastor, Andrew Osmun.

The pastor’s son, Jesse Osmun, is serving a 15-year federal prison sentence for sexually assaulting young girls at a school in South Africa where he was working while in the Peace Corps.

“This case clearly shows why it is so important for those charged with watching our children to follow the policies and procedures that are put in place for their protection,” said Douglas Mahoney, of the Bridgeport law firm Tremont Sheldon Robinson and Mahoney, who represented the woman. “If those policies that were in place had been followed by Reverend

Osmun, Jesse Osmun would never have been able to assault other young girls.”

Diocese officials did not return calls and emails for comment.

The lawsuit claims Jesse Osmun, then 28, sexually assaulted the woman, now 23, at the West River Street church in 2007.

Andrew Osmun was pastor of the church from 1999 to 2012.

Mahoney said he developed evidence to prove that the Rev. Osmun had known for years before 2007 that his son Jesse was attracted to preteen girls and that Jesse Osmun had engaged in inappropriate sexual behaviors. Despite this knowledge, Osmun allowed his son to volunteer with the youth group at St. Peter’s and have access to its children including the plaintiff who was a parishioner at St. Peter’s, he said.

In addition, Mahoney said Jesse Osmun worked at a number of overnight youth camps and schools throughout

Connecticut.

Jesse admitted in 2007 to his father that he had assaulted the plaintiff, Mahoney said, but the Rev. Osmun did not report that information to law enforcement as required by Connecticut law.

Jesse Osmun later joined the Peace Corps, where he continued to work with children.

While working at a preschool at an HIV/AIDS camp in South Africa, federal authorities said Jesse Osmun sexually assaulted girls between the ages of three and

six, bribing them with candy.

“The very little children that we were nurturing were being abused in the most heinous way,” Joan Dutton, director of the Umvoti AIDS Centre, where the abuse occurred, later wrote a federal judge.

“These children have so little, but Jesse has taken the very fundamentals of their lives away . ... The children are going to counseling, but he has ruined their little lives.”

Jesse Osmun was arrested when he returned to Milford in 2011. He later pleaded

guilty to the sexual assaults of the girls in South Africa and is serving his sentence in the federal prison at Fort Dix, New Jersey.

“My firm strongly believes that if policies that are in place are followed, it will make it much more difficult for child molesters to succeed. However, when the policies which are in place are ignored, children are hurt in ways that will affect them for the rest of their lives,” Mahoney said. “Tragically, that is exactly what happened to Jane and to the other children in Africa.”

About a month after Jesse Osmun’s arrest, his twin brother, Seth Osmun, was arrested by police in Austin, Texas, for allegedly possessing child pornography. Police there found pictures on his computer of a young girl between 7 and 9 years old engaging in intercourse and oral sex with an adult male, according to an affidavit submitted by Sgt. Robert Sunley of the Southern Texas Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.

Seth Osmun later was sentenced to two years in prison.