My name is Monsignor Roger Grundhaus.

I was featured on the front page of the Herald on July

28 and again on Sept. 12, 2019, in stories related to victims of clergy sexual abuse. As a result
of the resolution of the legal issues agains the Diocese of Crookston, my name will remain off
the list of individuals with credible claims agains them of sexual abuse of a minor. This means
there is NO credible evidence of a claim of sexual abuse against me. I am at last free to defend
myself, my reputation, and the Church I have devoted my life to serving.

I was accused by a single individual (Ron Vasek) of being a predator as the result of an incident
that occurred in 1973, some 46 years ago. I have been willing to speak on my own behalf since
the accusation was brought forth but was advised by my own and by diocesan counsel to refrain
from doing so.

This has not been to my advantage. ​I have been deposed by both legal counsel for the Church
and counsel from attorney Jeff Anderson’s office. As publicly touted by Reverend Bob
Schreiner, no local attorney would take up the “case” against me in relation to Ron Vasek’s
allegations, understandably so ​because there was no case to take. ​The accusations, however,
played well into the ongoing suits tht attorney Anderson had against Bishop Hoeppner and the
Diocese of Crookston. (At stake were the value of cases for victims that under the law were
given a new opportunity for justice through the MN Child Victims Act from 2013 to 2016). Mr.
Anderson employs a strong legal team focused almost entirely on suing the Catholic Church,
but more importantly he employs a powerful public relations strategy, mobilizing every media
outlet to support his work and bolster negative public opinion about priests and the Catholic
Church. The assertions by Ron Vasek against Bishop Hoeppner and me have kept the Diocese
of Crookston in the media crosshairs since 2017 until this present time. Here are some facts Mr.
Anderson and the news media have failed to share with you:

1. I have kept all my appointment calendars for the past 51 years, so I know fairly precisely
where I was and with whom I was spending time on any given day in that span of time. I
have shared my calendars with the legal counsel concerned.

2. On Jan. 7, 1969, I was appointed pastor of Holy Trinity Parish in Tabor. Ron Vasek was
in the second semester of his eighth grade year. (He was not a seventh grader as he
reported in his written allegation.)

3. I did not invite Ron Vasek as a sixteen-year-old to accompany me to assist in driving to a

Canon Law Convention in Columbus, Ohio, in 1971. The Convention took place April
24-26, 1972. Vasek at that time was 17 years old. Though he has shared pictures of
himself as a youthful altar boy, at 17 Ron was a mature young man, albeit legally a
minor. (The date of the convention was later confirmed by a call to the diocese of
Columbus, Ohio.) Ron Vasek accompanied me on that trip.
 4. The next year, I asked Ron if he would like to go along again, this time to Peoria, Illinois,
for the same convention. He happily agreed. That convention was held April 9-11, 1973.
Vasek was 18 years old at the time, not legally or emotionally a minor.

5. We did not reach our destination in Peoria because we were caught in a horrific blizzard
and were forced to spend almost 24 hours in an emergency shelter in Westby,
Wisconsin. I decided that we would skip what was left of the convention and return
home. On the return trip, we spent a night in a hotel in the Minneapolis area. The storm
had been a terrifying experience for both of us. Ron Vasek and I, of course, did not
share a bed as alleged. I do admit to jostline Ron out of his bed the morning we were
returning home (for a matter of a few seconds) so that we could get on the road. If he
considered this a sexual exchange, then he has remembered and reimagined it much
differently than I have. In fact, I had trouble remembering the morning at all, given the
life-threatening conditions of the day before and the 46 years that have passed since
that time.

For more than 40 years I had enjoyed a cordial relationship with Ron and Patty Vasek. Ron
requested that I return to the parish (after I had served out my assignment and moved to
another parish) to preside at their wedding. Twenty or more years later I was also asked, as a
close family friend, to preside at the weddings of two of his children. I had been an invited guest
at many family sacramental occasions, graduation parties, anniversaries, etc., over these years.
I was as proud as they were when their son Craig found his vocation in the priesthood. I was
deeply involved and the first one called at the tragic death of Ron’s brother in a farm accident
and when his father had a stroke. Years later I was called when his mother lost her life in a fatal
car crash. I concelebrated Mass at the funeral services of both of his parents.

I ask the reader to consider: Would a rational adult with any integrity invite someone they
believed to be a “predator priest” back to so many intimate family occasions? Why didn’t Ron
mention his concerns to his wife of 40 years or to anyone else until he was denied serving as a
deacon at Holy Trinity Parish in Tabor?

It is only now, when Ron was so let down by the refusal to become a deacon assigned to his
home parish that he found the need to implicate me in his effort to punish Bishop Hoeppner. It
was people from Ron’s own parish who had objected to his promotion to holy orders.

I have been neither charged nor convicted of a crime in civil procedures nor in the law of the
Church. But I have been repeatedly NAMED. I have not been a party to a civil lawsuit by
anyone. There is no credible evidence against me nor are there collaborators who would join
Ron in his accusation – even as widely broadcast as they were. My name and reputation have
been dragged through the quagmire of Ron Vasek’s vindictive assaults on the Bishop, shored
up by a diocesan priest, a former friend and colleague, who Ron successfully and unfortunately
manipulated.
Only Jeff Anderson’s public relations machine could convince the public that our Bishop was
malevolent in his attempt to shield us from this course of events. The evidence does not support
their position.

Because of Ron Vasek’s accusations, I was placed on leave from public ministry for 28 months.
The Diocese of Crookston’s fifteen lawsuits have been settled, and as a result, a judgement of
$5 million dollars was taken against the Diocese. I hope and pray that this will bring some
measure of justice and healing to those injured. ​Ron Vasek wasn’t one of them. A ​ s part of the
non-economic elements of the settlement, my name will not appear on the list of “credibly
accused priests” published on our diocesan website indicating there is simply no credible
evidence against me. The newspapers do not report this news but continue to malign my name
and reputation. I hope that now your publication and others within the umbrella of Forum
Communications will stop it.

Msgr. Roger Grundhaus