Life Teen co-founders sued

Two co-founders of Life Teen, the nation's largest Catholic youth ministry based in the Valley, were accused Thursday in a lawsuit of covering up and helping carry out sexual attacks on a 14-year-old boy two decades ago.

The lawsuit, filed in Maricopa County Superior Court, also claimed that the Life Teen program at St. Timothy's parish in Mesa had "a social culture which inappropriately focused upon sexual activity . . . and fostered an environment that led to inappropriate sexual behavior."

Named as defendants in the suit were Life Teen co-founders, Monsignor Dale J. Fushek and Phil Baniewicz, along with former priest Mark Lehman, resigned Bishop Thomas J. O'Brien, Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted, the Diocese of Phoenix, St. Timothy's Parish and Life Teen Inc., the program founded at St. Timothy's parish in 1985.

This is not the full story. There appears to be more:

The lawsuit repeated and expanded allegations brought to the diocese last month by William J. Cesolini, who said he was sodomized at St. Tim's parish in 1985 by Lehman while Fushek watched and performed sexual acts on himself without stopping to help or report the attack to authorities.

Cesolini, a one-time seminarian, said he regained his memory of the decades-old molestations in February 2003 after another priest made an unwanted sexual advance on him. He went to a church-paid counselor, who helped him gradually recover the details of the trauma. (Emphasis mine)

He gradually "recovered" the details...

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