Priest Removed After Claim Of 1980’s Sex Abuse

A priest accused of sex abuse at a California seminary in the 1980s has been removed from the ministry in Oregon, after a new abuse claim. According to the Santa Barbara News-Press, the Reverend Gus Krumm was removed last week as pastor of Ascension Catholic Church in Portland. He has been there four years, after ten years as associate pastor of churches in Orange County. Krumm had trained at St. Anthony´s Seminary in Santa Barbara in the 1980s. The newspaper says that in 1995 the Franciscan Order paid an out-of-court settlement to a former student at the Seminary, who alleged that Krumm repeatedly molested him in the early 1980s. A Santa Barbara attorney, David Nye, says the new allegation came from another former student at the seminary. The priest declined comment on the report of his removal from the ministry, but the provincial of the Fransiscan Order, the Reverend Finian McGinn, said: “Now I have a substantiated claim and I am acting on it.”

In 1993, a board of inquiry concluded that at least 34 boys were sexually abused at the Santa Barbara seminary from 1963 until it was closed in 1987. Two priests were convicted in the case. At the church where Krumm was removed on Tuesday in Portland, Parishioner Fran Shultz said: “I am shocked, because to me he seems like such a man of compassion for humanity. He has brought so many people to our church.”