COLLEGEVILLE, Minn. - In 2002, the head of St. John's Abbey told the public monks, who were accused of sexual misconduct, they would live under restrictions. Many thought it was a sort of house arrest, but that was not the case. The FOX 9 Investigators found just how easy it is for a so called restricted monk to leave St. John's and befriend a family, a family that didn't initially know about the monk's restrictions because St. John's had not made his name public.
A nap in a popular park filled with kids, an Eagle Scout ceremony, a cozy picture on the couch. Brother Jim Phillips has worked his way into the lives of a metro area family. A family we are not identifying to protect their privacy.
A man who knows the family well says, “I knew something had to be done. I didn't want these children to be hurt by this man in any way.”
Eric Evander is worried about Brother Phillips’ relationship with a woman in the family because it gives him access to her grandchildren, including a boy with autism. Brother Phillips is among the dozen or so St. John's priests and monks with credible allegations of sexual misconduct.
Pat Marker is a victims’ advocate. He says, “There's danger out there and there's danger coming from Collegeville.”
Marker knows all about Collegeville and the monks living there. It's a place unlike any other in Minnesota. The sprawling campus includes St. John's University. In the summer young people come from all over the world for events.
There is a beach where kids swim, there is St. John's prep school where teenaged boys live in a dorm and right in the middle is the Monastery where the monks live including at least a dozen the Abbey acknowledges sexually molested an untold number of young people. It's at that prep school Brother Phillips met his two accusers in the late 1970's.
Andrew Butler was one of the accusers. He attended the prep school after his mother died. He told the FOX 9 Investigators, “He’d taken a strong and peculiar interest in me very early on. He would tousle my hair and frequently touch me on the shoulder or put his hand on my back. Within about four weeks it had progressed to something of a much more sexual nature. He was having me come to his private room on a weekly basis throughout that academic year.
Brother Phillips denies he molested his accusers from the 70's but St. John's Abbey confirms Brother Phillips lives at the Abbey under what's called a safety plan.
Marker knows all about the safety plan, “I know what conditions these men live under and it is completely different than what the public believes.”
Marker says the public's belief was formed in 2002 when Abbot John Klassen made a public apology for the sexual abuse.
At the time Abbot Klassen said, “I offer you my deepest and most sincere apology.”
His letter of apology goes on to say, “I am deeply sorry that some members of St. John’s monastic community have violated such a fundamental part of our commitment by engaging in abusive sexual behavior with people in our schools and parishes.”
Klassen said in his statement, “The monks who have sexually abused young persons or vulnerable adults are not allowed to have pastoral or unsupervised social contact with our students or other young persons and he said Monks under restriction could not travel without his permission.”
Like so many of us, Eric Evander understood the Monks would be under a sort of house arrest. He says, “Abbot Klassen said they would be on restrictions. To me that means they would be restricted to monastic grounds.”
But the FOX 9 Investigators have learned the so called restrictions do not keep the restricted monks on the grounds. The safety plans allow them unescorted trips off campus.
Marker says, “The restrictions they're under allow a man like brother Jim Phillips to go to a restaurant to go to a home and visit with kids and grandkids and while he's been removed from ministry and restricted in some ways, he's had no problem in opening up other avenues.”
The FOX 9 Investigators watched as Brother Phillips ate lunch with his woman friend at a Denny's restaurant where kids come and go. The two then went to a nearby park, filled with kids of all ages. The woman carried a pillow in her trunk so Brother Phillips could take a nap.
The two then said goodbye and Phillips headed back to St. John's Abbey where remember he is a monk, a man who’s taken a vow of chastity, a man who the Abbot removed from public ministry after Andrew Butler's allegations came to his attention in 2002.
Butler says, “He should not be unaccompanied outside anywhere of the monastery.”
Butler is stunned the monks have so much freedom.
He provided the FOX 9 Investigators with an e-mail exchange he had with Abbot Klassen in 2007. The Abbot wrote that Butler's claims of abuse were valid and that Phillips safety plan puts in place safeguards against further sexual abuse or exploitation.
But when the FOX 9 Investigators told Butler what we had seen he said,
“It doesn't sound like there's any
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