What happened to you at St. Francis High School in La Cañada was not okay.

The Capuchin boys' school on Foothill Boulevard. One priest who taught there for 25 years, 1970 to 1995, and who sits on the Archdiocese of Los Angeles's own list of accused clergy with 11 accusers and incident dates of 1971 to 1984. A complaint filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court in December 2019 says it happened in his classrooms, during wrestling, and that the school, the Capuchin order and the Archdiocese all knew or should have. About 26 such suits followed, by their lawyers' count. If you were a Golden Knight in those years, or any year, we think this page is about you.

WatchingSeptember 2026: nothing new naming St. Francis has been filed since the 2020 to 2022 window closed, that we have read, and no criminal charge was ever filed on the priest in this record. What we watch is the Archdiocese, a co-defendant in every one of these suits, which paid out its $880 million settlement on April 1, 2026, and whether the Capuchin province files anything. The questions below work now.

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6 questions. Your answers are private and go to one person.

Looking for the page on the Archdiocese itself? Archdiocese of Los Angeles survivors: the Archbishop as the defendant, the $660 million and $880 million settlements, its own list of more than 350 accused clergy, and one set of questions that works for every parish and school it ran, St. Francis included.

This applies to you no matter what

You never sued. About 26 former students did, between 2019 and 2022, by their lawyers' count. Their cases are theirs. None of them settled anything for you.
It was the wrestling. Or it happened in a classroom after the bell, or in the friary, or on a retreat. The 2019 complaint says classrooms; the Archdiocese's own file says wrestling matches. Anywhere under the school's roof counts.
It was a different priest, or a coach, or a teacher, and not the man in this record. The 2019 suits name one friar. But the place has been running since 1946, and he was never the only adult in the building.
You were 15, maybe 16 or 17, and he was Father, which at that age is its own kind of authority. The 2019 plaintiff was 15 to 17. A boy that age doesn't have a word for it, and the man you are now may not either. Fine.
The 2020 to 2022 window came and went while you were still making up your mind, and now you're 58 and figure that was that. One door, yes. It doesn't close the one that runs through when you understood what it did to you and what the school knew, and the record below is unusually plain on that. A lawyer decides it, not a web page.
You are asking for your father, or your brother, or a friend from the class of '84 who can't ask. That counts too.

The St. Francis High School record: the 1995 allegation, the 2002 letter to parents, the Archdiocese's list, and the lawsuits

We didn't write any of this. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles did, in its 2004 report and the file summary it published the next year; the Los Angeles Times and the Pasadena Star-News did; the lawyers who filed the 2019 complaint did, in a document stamped by the Superior Court; and we link every line. Where it says a complaint alleges something, that is all it is. Where it says the Archdiocese's list, that is that list's finding, made by the Archdiocese and nobody else. No court has convicted anyone in this record, and no criminal charge was ever filed that we can find. The Archdiocese's wider record, hundreds of names and two settlements, is one sentence at the bottom and a page of its own.

March and August 15, 1995

An allegation was raised in March 1995 about an incident roughly twenty years earlier: that while wrestling with a student, as the Archdiocese's own file summary later put it, "some inappropriate contact occurred." On August 15, 1995, Father Christopher Kearney, O.F.M. Cap., a priest and teacher at St. Francis since 1970, was transferred to the San Lorenzo Friary in Santa Ynez. The next August he was made postulant director there, all of it dated by the Archdiocese itself in the addendum to its 2004 report. Archdiocese of Los Angeles, Addendum to the Report to the People of God (2005), via BishopAccountability.

March 9 and March 26, 2002

Seven years after the 1995 allegation, and only after a man who wouldn't give his name rang the Diocese of Orange (Orange, not Los Angeles) on March 9, 2002, alleging Kearney had engaged in "boundary violations while wrestling with high school boys in 1979 and 1980," St. Francis wrote to its parents. That was March 26, seventeen days after the call. The letter, in the Archdiocese's summary, said an anonymous caller to a talk-radio station had made an allegation of sexual misconduct against him, and that back in March 1995 "a similar allegation was raised." First time the school told parents, as far as we can find. Archdiocese of Los Angeles, Addendum to the Report to the People of God (2005), via BishopAccountability.

August 18, 2002

The Los Angeles Times, counting 33 priests and one deacon accused since 1985, listed Kearney, then 59, as on inactive leave, with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department "investigating claims that he molested several boys during impromptu wrestling matches between 1970 and 1995 at St. Francis High School." He could not be reached. That year he was also removed as head of the San Lorenzo Seminary, the Valley Sun later reported. No charge followed that we can find, then or since. Los Angeles Times, via BishopAccountability.

November 21, 2003

Two lawsuits filed that Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court by attorney Raymond Boucher named 17 priests. Two of the claims were St. Francis claims: a boy allegedly molested from 1977 to 1978, and another from 1978 to 1980, both in La Cañada Flintridge, both by Christopher Kearney of St. Francis High School. The Archdiocese's line that week was that it took the suits "very seriously" and wanted them resolved in mediation. Allegations in a complaint, nothing more. Pasadena Star-News, via BishopAccountability.

February 17, 2004

The Report to the People of God came out this day. It's the Archdiocese of Los Angeles's own document, its own list, clergy accused of abusing minors from 1930 through 2003, nobody else's count. Go to the religious-order section, line 25. Kearney, Christopher. Capuchins, O.F.M. Cap. Incident dates 1971 to 1984. Accusers: 11. That is the Archdiocese's finding, on its own review. He is still on the consolidated list it keeps today, status "Left Archdiocese." Archdiocese of Los Angeles, Report to the People of God, list of accused (2004), via BishopAccountability.

December 23, 2019

The case is John DOE LA 1002 v. Doe 1, a Corporation Sole, et al., number 19STCV46652, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court two days before Christmas under what was then the brand-new Child Victims Act. The plaintiff was born in 1968. He alleges that Kearney sexually assaulted him repeatedly from about 1984 to 1986, at 15, 16 and 17, while he was a student there and an altar server: on school premises, in classrooms among other places, pinned to the ground in a wrestling hold and touched. Two counts of negligence, supervision and retention, against three defendants: the Archdiocese, a corporation sole at 3424 Wilshire; the Capuchin order, headquartered in Burlingame; and the school entity at 200 Foothill Boulevard. It alleges each of them knew or had reason to know, and points to the Archdiocese's own 2004 list. The Archdiocese told the press it had not been served, that Kearney was a Capuchin and not its priest, and that it had listed him in 2004 all the same. Complaint, John DOE LA 1002 v. Doe 1 (LASC 19STCV46652), filed by Jeff Anderson & Associates.

December 27, 2019

At a press conference downtown, the plaintiff's lawyers called it the first of six suits over St. Francis and said the wrestling was "a practice widely known in the school and openly referenced in the school yearbook the same year the plaintiff in this lawsuit was assaulted." Counsel's words; the yearbook page was among their exhibits. They said he was believed to be living in San Francisco and that the church had not told them whether he was still a priest or had access to children. Requests for comment from the Capuchin order and the school went unanswered that day, the Valley Sun reported. Los Angeles Times / La Cañada Valley Sun.

2019 to 2022

Over the three-year window, the same firm says it filed approximately 26 lawsuits against St. Francis High School naming Kearney. How each ended is not printed anywhere we could read: no verdict, no St. Francis figure, nothing on a public docket we can cite. What is on the record is the Archdiocese's own statement that its $880 million settlement, announced October 16, 2024 and paid out April 1, 2026, resolved 1,353 window claims, including claims against religious-order priests serving in the Archdiocese. That settlement lives on the Archdiocese's page, not this one. Jeff Anderson & Associates, counsel of record.

We checked this on September 15, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from 2019 to 2022. When something new gets filed or decided, it goes in here within 72 hours, with the link.

Who can be held responsible in a St. Francis High School lawsuit

Three defendants, and the 2019 complaint names all three. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles, which in a California courtroom is The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Los Angeles, a corporation sole, and which put this priest on its own list in 2004 with 11 accusers. The Capuchin Franciscans' Western America Province, the Province of Our Lady of Angels out of Burlingame: they founded the school in 1946, they sponsor it today, and he was their priest, as the Archdiocese was quick to say in December 2019. And the school's own corporation at 200 Foothill Boulevard, owned by its board. Not the priest, or not mainly. He was never charged. The cases were built against the institutions that kept him in a classroom of teenage boys for 25 years.

The theory isn't complicated, and this record makes it plainer than most. An allegation in March 1995, by the Archdiocese's own file summary, and a transfer that August. A 2002 call about 1979 and 1980. A letter to parents that same month, the first we can find. A sheriff's investigation. A place on the Archdiocese's list by 2004 with incident dates back to 1971. The complaint says the defendants knew or had reason to know and kept him in place anyway. Whether they did is what a civil case decides, and no court has. The Archdiocese says he was not its priest. It was sued regardless, and it settled 1,353 window claims in 2024 without admitting any of them.

None of the three is a public body, so there's no government claim form to file first, and the statute says none is needed anyway. And because they are private, California's cover-up rule applies on paper: up to three times the damages where a plaintiff proves a concerted effort to hide the evidence. Proves. The complaint pleads it; nobody has proven it. If your years at St. Francis were his, 1970 to 1995, start here. Later, or a different man, start here too and say so. The Archdiocese has its own page, and a lawyer sorts out which defendant answers for which years.

Your deadline: the California statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse at a Catholic high school

Until your 40th birthday, or five years from the day you understood what it did to you, whichever comes later. That is California's rule for anything done to a minor before 2024, Code of Civil Procedure section 340.11, and it's why we ask whether you were born in 1987 or later. Born in 1987 or after, and the door is open on age alone. Now the honest part. The priest in this record left the school in August 1995, so even his last freshmen, boys born around 1980, turned 40 by 2021. If your years at St. Francis were his years, the age route is closed. We won't dress that up.

What's left is real, and narrower. The same law opened a window, January 1, 2020 through December 31, 2022, when anyone could file at any age; the 26 or so St. Francis suits went through it. It is closed. So for someone over 40 today the claim runs on discovery, five years from when you connected what happened to the harm it did you as an adult, plus two things the statute asks of anyone over 40 who sues an institution rather than the man. A showing that the institution knew or had reason to know, or failed to take reasonable steps (section 340.11(c)); on this name, the 1995 allegation, the transfer, the 2002 letter and the 2004 list are already in the Archdiocese's own documents. And certificates of merit, from your lawyer and a licensed therapist, reviewed by a judge before anyone is served. It's a path. It's also one a lawyer has to look at before anyone can tell you yes or no, and we aren't lawyers.

For completeness: anything on or after January 1, 2024 has no deadline at all under section 340.1. Put plainly, then. A St. Francis student born in 1987 or after: you have time, years of it. His years, the 1970s to 1995: you may, and it turns on facts about you and facts about the school that one call can start to sort out. What doesn't keep is the rest. Which classroom. Which yearbook. Who else was on the mat that day.

Your situation still qualifies even if

You never told anyone. Boys at an all-boys Catholic school in 1983 mostly didn't, and the ones who eventually did took 35 years.
You were one of the anonymous callers. A call to the Diocese of Orange in 2002, or to a radio station, is not a claim. Nobody filed anything for you.
You liked him. Plenty did, a priest who'd been on that campus since 1970 and whose wrestling was in the yearbook. That is part of how it worked.
It was a wrestling match in front of other boys and you've spent forty years telling yourself that meant it didn't count.
You talked to a lawyer once already, back in 2003 or in 2020, and nothing came of it. Say so on the call, first thing. It changes what the next lawyer can do; it doesn't end the conversation.
You live in Nevada or Arizona now, or anywhere. The class of 1985 scattered like every class does.

The school covered

One school, and we mean all of it: the classrooms, the friary, the gym, a retreat, anything that ran under the school's name. St. Francis High School, at 200 Foothill Boulevard, La Cañada Flintridge, California 91011, which the Capuchin friars founded in 1946 and which is still theirs in the sense that matters (its board owns it, the Capuchins' Western America Province sponsors it), boys only, grades 9 through 12, college-prep, roughly 620 of them these days. 1970 to 1995 for the priest in the record above; any year for anyone else. Yours was a different Catholic school, or a parish, somewhere in Los Angeles, Ventura or Santa Barbara County? Go to /archdiocese-of-los-angeles-survivors, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles's own page. The Archdiocese is a named defendant in the St. Francis suits too, we know, but its wider record, the 2007 and 2024 settlements, that list of more than 350 accused clergy, the parishes, the archdiocesan schools, lives over there and not here. St. Francis is this one.

Questions people are asking

Can I still sue St. Francis High School after the AB 218 window closed?

Maybe, and a lawyer has to look. The window that let anyone file at any age ran January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2022 and is closed. Born in 1987 or later, you have until 40 regardless. Older, the claim runs on discovery, five years from when you connected the abuse to the harm, plus a showing that the school, the Capuchins or the Archdiocese knew or had reason to know, plus certificates of merit. On this name the knowledge facts sit in the Archdiocese's own documents.

Was Father Christopher Kearney ever convicted?

No. Not charged, either, as far as any public record we read shows. The Sheriff's Department was investigating claims against him in August 2002, per the Los Angeles Times, and nothing was filed. What does exist: the Archdiocese's own list, where his name has sat since 2004 with 11 accusers and incident dates of 1971 to 1984, plus the civil complaints, 2003 and then 2019 to 2022. Complaints are allegations, nothing more.

Did St. Francis know about him before the 2019 lawsuit?

The Archdiocese's own file summary says an allegation was raised in March 1995 and he was transferred that August, and that the school wrote to parents in March 2002 mentioning it. The plaintiffs' lawyers say the wrestling was in the yearbook. The 2019 complaint alleges all three defendants knew or had reason to know. No court has ruled on any of it. That is exactly the question a civil case asks.

Is he still alive? Does it matter?

We don't know. He was 59 in 2002, so about 83 now, and the last public word was the plaintiffs' lawyers saying in 2019 they believed he was in San Francisco. It doesn't change the case. The claims were never really against him; they're against the institutions, and all three are still there. The school is open. The Archdiocese, for its part, just finished paying out $880 million, and neither one has filed for bankruptcy.

What would a lawyer cost me for something like this?

Nothing, here. Every case is on contingency. The lawyer is paid only out of what is recovered, and if nothing is recovered you owe nothing. Not for the call, not for the review, not for the case.

Who sees your form

Kerim Eravci · Survivor Advocate · Not a lawyer

I was a victim, and I waited. Not because I didn't know what happened to me (I knew every day), but because I'd decided it was over, mine to carry, nobody's business. When I finally went looking for a lawyer, the answer came back in two words I'd never thought about: statute of limitations. My time had run out while I was busy getting through it.

What that has cost me since is a long story, and I'll tell you the whole thing in private, if you want it. The short version is the reason my name is on this page: I'm here to help people do what I wish I'd done, which is find out where you stand while the door's still open.

I'm not a lawyer. I read what you send, I call you once, on your terms, and nothing gets filed unless you say so. Ask sooner than I did.

Kerim Eravci is not an attorney. He's a survivor.

What happens next. Three steps, nothing more until you say so.

You answer 6 questions. Nothing is filed. Nothing starts.
A survivor calls you, once. Not a robot, not a call center. Someone who has been where you are.
You decide. You find out your options. If you want to stop there, you stop there.

How this works

ME2 Survivors Alliance protects the heart. Licensed California attorneys do the legal work. We are not lawyers and we don't pretend to be.

You never pay a dollar

Every case is on contingency. There is no charge for the call, the review, or the case. The firm is paid only out of a recovery, and if there is no recovery you owe nothing.