More priests of the Jesuit Order of the Catholic Church were accused of sexual abuse Friday. The accusations date back to the 1940s and reaches across California and other western states.
The Jesuits added those names to the list of former priests or brothers that had "credible claims of sexual abuse of a minor or vulnerable adult."
Eighty priests were assigned in the Bay Area at one point but were not necessarily accused here.
Out of the 80, 15 worked at Bellarmine College Prep in San Jose and 14 priests worked at Saint Ignatius College Prep in San Francisco.
On Friday, the school sent a message to its community to make them aware of the names.
The only connection to the Bay Area for nearly half of the 80 priests was time spent at Alma College, a seminary in the Los Gatos foothills that moved to Berkeley in 1969.
Of the living, seven live in the Sacred Heart Jesuit Center in Los Gatos.
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"This is all about the bottom line of these organizations that harbor these people," said priest abuse survivor Will Lynch. "If you expose them, they're going to be forced to change their organization."
Lynch said one of those priests living there, Jarold Lindner, raped him when he was seven. In 2010, he found Linder and attacked him at the retirement home when Linder wouldn't sign a confession.
Lynch has been pushing for the church to release all of the names immediately.
The Jesuits sent out an apology Friday stating in part, "It’s inconceivable that someone entrusted with the pastoral care of a child could be capable of something so harmful. Yet, tragically, this is a part of our Jesuit history, a legacy we cannot ignore."
The order noting this is a very small percentage of its priests and that it will release more names, if more cases are identified.
