A priest who served in several DuPage County churches during a 33-year career resigned last year after admitting to having a lengthy affair with a married woman.
Rev. Donald Kocher now has admitted in court that the relationship, for which he and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Joliet are being sued, was far from an isolated incident.
In a deposition taken last month in Will County Circuit Court, Kocher, 61, admitted he had sex with as many as a dozen women, and he said some of those relationships lasted for years. He said the affairs took place during a period of more than 20 years beginning about 1970 or 1971.
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“I’ve always seen them as morally wrong, and I’ve always tried to bring them to a conclusion as quickly as I could,” Kocher said in response to questioning by his accuser’s attorney, Keith Aeschliman. “And some of those people are my dearest friends today.”
Aeschliman said there is no dispute that the accuser, known only as “Jane Doe,” was a consenting partner during at least a portion of the affair, which lasted about three years beginning in 1990.
But he claims that Kocher and the Joliet diocese bear responsibility because a “priest, who has the ability to know intimate details about parishioners and a power superior to theirs, gives an advantage that makes it not totally consensual.”
During his deposition, Kocher did not identify any of his sexual partners, as Aeschliman had sought. Kocher’s attorney, Roger O’Reilly, argued the women deserve to have their privacy maintained and should not see a part of their histories printed in newspapers.
“This impacts too much on peoples’ lives,” he said. “We’re talking 25 to 30 years ago in some instances. What good is served?”
In a suit filed two years ago in Will County Circuit Court, the 42-year-old plaintiff claims that she was “induced” into the affair and that the Roman Catholic Diocese of Joliet should have been aware of Kocher’s sexual activities.
She accuses the priest of sexual harassment and charges she was fired from her $24,000-a-year job at the Lombard church where Kocher was employed after she told her story to Bishop Joseph Imesch, who she blames for “negligent hiring and retention” of the priest.
The suit seeks more than $15,000 each from the diocese and the priest and $18,000 in lost wages from the church. Kocher’s attorneys, however, argue the woman entered into a “mutually agreeable” relationship “in the exercise of her own free will,” and is not entitled to any award.
The affair began while Kocher was pastor at St. Isaac Joques Church in Hinsdale. According to the complaint, Kocher served as the woman’s counselor during that time and was placed in a position of trust. Kocher denies counseling the woman.
In 1993, Kocher was assigned to St. Pius X Church in Lombard, where the woman soon got an administrative job. Before she was fired that December, the woman had twice checked into psychiatric hospitals because, court papers say, she was distressed over the affair.
During that period, the plaintiff alleges Kocher persuaded her to resume the affair, but Kocher denies it.
The diocese is referring questions to its attorney, James Byrne, who did not return telephone calls Thursday.
In a statement released after the initial allegations were filed, the diocese called them “very disturbing” and said, “If the allegations are true, it would appear to be conduct between two consenting adults, which cannot be condoned under any circumstance.”
According to his testimony, Kocher said neither Imesch nor the diocese was aware of sexual relationships with anyone other than the plaintiff, but that sometime, he believes during the 1970s, former Bishop Romeo Blanchette called Kocher into his office to ask about a man’s charge that Kocher had passed a sexually transmitted disease to the man’s wife.
Kocher said he admitted guilt during the 15-minute conversation, but did not indicate what, if any, disciplinary action was taken.
Kocher had previously served at DuPage County churches in Elmhurst, Glen Ellyn and Glendale Heights, as well as Immaculate Conception in Morris, Ill.
Kocher has filed a motion to dismiss the suit, claiming the Constitution frees the church from tort cases over negligent hiring and/or supervision. Tort liability, the defense argues, would affect church decisions on the placement, training and supervision of priests.
But lawyers for the plaintiff argued the action isn’t directed at the church, but is designed rather to “protect the secular society from decades of improper sexual contact by a Roman Catholic priest.”