BERMANTOWN, Ky., Feb. 16 (UPI) -- A former bookkeeper at a Catholic church in Kentucky says an ex-priest who had been convicted of sexual assault was allowed to head the parish council.
Margie Weiter, who worked at St. Therese Church in Germantown, and her husband have sued the Archdiocese of Louisville, Archbishop Joseph Kurtz and the Rev. Anthony Olges, the pastor at St. Therese, the Louisville Courier-Journal reported Monday. Weiter said she was fired for objecting when the Rev. James Schook, also named as a defendant, was allowed to live at St. Therese after being accused of molesting a child in another parish.
The Weiters sued in January. Last Friday, they added Bruce Ewing as a defendant.
Ewing, a priest in the 1970s, left the ministry and married but was not formally removed from the priesthood until 2004. In 2007, he was placed on probation for five years for sexually assaulting a teenage girl in a Louisville parish three decades earlier.
Weiter says Ewing headed the parish council last year at St. Therese, violating a 2003 policy that no one convicted of sexual misconduct with a minor can hold a church position, including volunteer jobs. She and her husband, Gary, say Ewing did not take their complaints about Schook seriously.
