(NBC NEWS) — A former Tennessee church organist claims in a lawsuit filed this week that he was raped by a seminarian who was a protégé of a powerful Polish prelate and that the bishop of Knoxville tried to cover it up.
The accuser, identified in court papers as John Doe, said the seminarian, Wojciech Sobczuk, sexually assaulted him on Feb. 5, 2019, and that afterward Bishop Rick Stika told a fellow priest “that Doe was the aggressor and had raped Sobczuk,” the suit states.
“The lawsuit seeks to hold Stika and the Diocese accountable for their role in facilitating Sobczuk’s abuse of Doe, intimidating Doe into silence, and defaming Doe to protect their public image,” says the suit, which was filed Tuesday and named Stika and the diocese as defendants and is seeking unspecified damages. Sobczuk is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit.