Two priests long affiliated with the University of Notre Dame groomed and sexually abused young men at the storied Catholic college and elsewhere over many years dating to the 1980s.
And the clerics — both with ties to the Chicago area — were allowed to stay in ministry long after church and school officials were said to have been aware of some of the potential misconduct.
Those are the central takeaways from interviews with the Chicago Sun-Times and a recently released report commissioned by Notre Dame detailing accusations of sexual misconduct by the Rev. Thomas King, who is now retired, and the Rev. David Porterfield, who died in November.
———————
King had been the rector of Notre Dame’s Zahm Hall dormitory from 1980 to 1997, a period in which he was accused of subjecting at least 15 Notre Dame University and Holy Cross College students to a “scheme” in which he had them strip naked or nearly so under the guise of needing to weigh them out of concern for their health, the report says.
