February 08, 2007
Thursday

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- A child-support case winding its way through the courts offers a new twist on an old scandal: The accused deadbeat father is a Roman Catholic priest.

The two "kids" suing him and the Jesuits for support are now grown men with children of their own.

Jesuit leaders have known for nearly 40 years that the Rev. James Jacobson had children here and eventually kept him out of Alaska to avoid "any possible scandal for the Church in Alaska," according to a new legal filing on behalf of his two sons. The mother of one of the men also is suing Jacobson for child support and damages. The other mother has died.

Messages left for Jacobson and his attorney on Tuesday were not returned. Efforts to reach the Jesuits and their attorneys were also unsuccessful.

"They say he shouldn't have to pay child support because he's a priest and took a vow of poverty," said Anchorage attorney Chris Cooke, who filed the child-support motion in January for the three, identified in court documents only as John A. Doe, John B. Doe and Jane B. Doe.

Jacobson always has turned his money over to his religious order, Society of Jesus Oregon Province, which covers Alaska. He can't keep money because he is a priest, his lawyer, Joan Unger of Anchorage, wrote in opposing the motion for child support. The Jesuits say in court papers they don't have to pay child support for priests.

But being a priest doesn't erase the responsibility to care for one's children, Cooke said. Nor does time wipe away the obligation.

No one disputes that Jacobson fathered the two men. Relying on DNA testing in 2005, a Bethel judge in May declared him to be the biological father of both John Does.

Their mothers, both married at the time, were sexually assaulted by Jacobson and became pregnant, according to a lawsuit filed in Bethel Superior Court in October 2005. Jacobson also is accused in the suit of raping a 16-year-old girl in another Western Alaska village.

Jacobson, now 83, was ordained as a Jesuit priest and worked in Alaska from about 1961 to 1976 in various Yup'ik villages in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. He also was a school principal at a Jesuit school near Glennallen. He later became a prison chaplain in Oregon.

He took "simple vows of poverty, chastity and obedience," according to documents provided by the Jesuits and quoted in court papers.

"Apparently Father Jacobson did not adhere to his vow of chastity," Cooke wrote in a footnote to one of his filings.

Jacobson now lives in a Jesuit home in Spokane, Wash.

Since his children were born, Jacobson has received more than $1.5 million in salary and pension, but it all went to the Jesuits and neither he nor the religious order ever gave his children a dime, the legal filings say.

His sons grew up hardscrabble and unsure of who they really were, Cooke said. One, now 40, is in the Alaska National Guard and is serving in Kuwait. The other, 31, has worked as a plumber's apprentice.

It's uncommon for a child-support case to be brought once the child is grown but not unheard of, Cooke said. The John Does only now are able to do so since they've just established paternity, he said.

This is the first time, as far as Cooke knows, that Alaskans have sought child support from a Catholic priest, but there have been other cases around the country.

John A. Doe is seeking nearly $325,000 in child support. John B. Doe is seeking more than $270,000.

SitNews ©2006
Stories In The News
Ketchikan, Alaska