The Report Named 163 Names. The Lawsuits Are Still Coming.
In 2019, then-Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt released the findings of an investigation into every Catholic diocese in the state, going back to 1945. Investigators reviewed personnel files for more than 2,000 priests and 300 deacons, seminarians, and religious women across Missouri's four dioceses: the Archdiocese of St. Louis, and the Dioceses of Jefferson City, Kansas City-St. Joseph, and Springfield-Cape Girardeau. The report found that 163 clergy members had been accused of sexual abuse or misconduct against minors, and concluded plainly that for decades, when faced with credible reports of abuse, the church prioritized protecting its priests over acknowledging victims.
That report is now more than six years old. It didn't close the book on Missouri's clergy abuse cases. If anything, it opened the door to the lawsuits that have followed since, several of them still working through the courts right now.
What's Actually Happening in Court
In September 2024, two federal lawsuits, each seeking $75 million, were filed against the Dioceses of Jefferson City and Springfield-Cape Girardeau, accusing both of covering up clergy sexual abuse dating to the 1980s and 1990s. Those suits followed five others filed that July on behalf of 60 people alleging abuse by priests and women religious across the state. A separate suit filed the same September against Springfield-Cape Girardeau, on behalf of 11 plaintiffs, named Bishop Edward Rice directly in his official capacity, alleging he knowingly enabled and concealed decades of abuse by church employees. The diocese's public response was measured: it said it would examine the claims and continue to pray for those harmed, while declining further comment given the pending litigation.
Here in the Kansas City area, the most directly relevant case is a lawsuit filed in November 2025 against the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph. The suit alleges that Father John Tulipana, now deceased, abused a boy in Grandview in the late 1970s, and that diocesan leadership had received complaints about Tulipana's boundary violations with children dating back to his time in seminary, yet continued to place him in roles with access to minors. The plaintiff says he repressed memory of the abuse for decades, until his mother disclosed it to him near the end of her life in 2021. The diocese has stated it takes all such allegations seriously and encourages anyone with knowledge of abuse involving diocesan clergy to file a confidential report.
Why the Pattern Looks Familiar
If you've read our other posts on institutional abuse, this structure will sound familiar: an institution receives credible warnings about a specific individual, responds by relocating rather than removing that person, and the abuse continues under a system built to protect the institution's reputation rather than the children in its care. It's the same pattern we've documented at Kanakuk Kamps, at Agape Boarding School, and within Missouri's state-run juvenile facilities. The institution changes. The failure doesn't.
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP, has been active in Missouri on exactly this front, the same organization that has shown up alongside advocates pushing the state's attorney general for a coordinated investigation into abusive boarding schools. That overlap isn't a coincidence. The advocacy infrastructure built around clergy abuse accountability has, in many cases, become the same infrastructure now pushing for accountability across youth-serving institutions generally.
What Missouri Law Actually Allows
Under Missouri law, a person who was sexually abused as a minor can generally file a civil suit either within ten years of their 21st birthday, or within three years of discovering an injury caused by the abuse, whichever gives them more time. There is no statute of limitations on criminal prosecution for child sexual abuse in Missouri. That discovery-based window is exactly what allowed the Tulipana lawsuit to proceed decades after the alleged abuse occurred: the plaintiff's claim is built around when he became aware of the harm, not simply when the abuse itself took place.
That said, Missouri's broader push to further extend or reform its civil statute of limitations for child sexual abuse claims, the same reform effort tied to Trey's Law and to survivor advocacy around Kanakuk, has repeatedly stalled in the state Senate despite unanimous support in House committees. The legal window that exists today is meaningfully better than it once was. It is not necessarily the last word on how much time survivors should have.
If You Were Harmed by Clergy in Missouri or Kansas
Whether the abuse happened five years ago or fifty, and whether the diocese involved is Kansas City-St. Joseph, Jefferson City, Springfield-Cape Girardeau, St. Louis, or elsewhere, the question of whether you still have a legal path forward depends on specific facts about your case, including when you first connected your injuries to what happened to you. That's worth a real conversation, not a guess.
McGonagle Johnson offers confidential consultations for survivors of clergy sexual abuse and other institutional abuse in Missouri and Kansas.
