Delbert Acoman, a 35-year-old police officer from Stebbins, Alaska, was one of 20 additional Alaska Natives added to a recent lawsuit filed against the Northwest Jesuits, the current president of Seattle University, and several other priests accused of either molesting children or conspiring to hide molestation. (A story about the lawsuit is in this week's paper.)

"He left a scar on me," Acoman said of their priest who abused him, speaking at a press conference in the Sorrento Hotel this morning. He wasn't talking about a figurative scar. "It's still on me, in my private area."

Attorney John Manly said the Northwest Jesuits had declared "a sexual and cultural war on Alaska Natives" by knowingly sending dozens of serial child molesters to isolated Native villages where they (allegedly) abused hundreds of children from the 1940s until just a few years ago.

Flo Kenny, a 74-year-old Alaska Native, showed a picture of the boarding school where she grew up and explained how the priest would summon her from the girls' dormitory to his cell, telling her to walk along the riverbank at night where it was dark and no-one would see her.

Kenny said her mother had tuberculosis, dropped her children at the boarding school when Kenny was two, and was never seen by her children again. Kenny fell into a deep depression at age 13. The father-superior of the boarding school, she said, initiated a sexual relationship around that time that lasted until Kenny was 18.

"I was devoid of emotions," she said, "until I was about 40. That's how long it took."

Also added to the suit: Father-General Adolfo Nicolas, the head of the Jesuit order in Rome, who is in the United States on a tour, and Father Francis Case who, until a few months ago, was the Secretary of the Jesuits in Rome—the second-most powerful Jesuit in the world.

Last year, Fr. Case returned to Seattle University (where he was once a teacher) to await a new assignment. I spoke with him a few weeks ago (while researching this week's story in the paper about the lawsuits) but he declined to comment on the accusations, referring me to the Portland headquarters of the Oregon Province of the Society of Jesus (aka the Northwest Jesuits).

Fr. Sundborg (the president of the Seattle University) and Fr. Case both served as the Provincial (the head) of the Northwest Jesuits during the 1990s.

Manly quoted from a deposition Case gave in May 2008 in which Case (allegedly) admitted to hiding sex-abuse investigations from the public while he was Provincial to protect "the good name of the Society [of Jesus, aka the Jesuits]."

"They never called the police," Manly said of Fr. Sundborg, Fr. Case, and other alleged conspirators. "The civil justice system is our clients' last resort."

Manly estimates 50 to 100 more plaintiffs will be added to the suit and hopes it will go to trial for a public airing, instead of being settled. He speculated that the Jesuits would try to avoid a trial, possibly by declaring bankruptcy.

Last week, I asked Pat Walsh—a spokesman for the Northwest Jesuits—whether the organization was considering declaring bankruptcy in the coming year.

"The Oregon Province," he answered by email, "is looking at all options."

This post has been slightly edited since the first version went up.