Morning Star ranch hit with new lawsuit

Another man sued Morning Star Boys’ Ranch in Spokane on Friday, alleging he was physically, sexually and psychologically abused during the two years he lived at the home for troubled boys.

Joseph S. Matherly, of Spokane County, now 57, alleges he was one of the teenage boys who employees of Morning Star sodomized using long-stemmed flowers in the mid-1960s. Matherly lived at the ranch for 18 months, when he was 14 and 15 years old, according to the suit filed in Spokane County Superior Court.

The suit brings to 19 the number of people who allegedly suffered some form of abuse at the ranch in court filings that began in August 2005. Some 11 plaintiffs allege sexual abuse, news reports show.

Attorneys for Morning Star had not seen the suit Tuesday.

Jenn Kantz, spokeswoman for the nonprofit facility, said that for more than 50 years Morning Star has provided “a safe place for adolescent boys to go and seek care and instruction.” The allegations, she added, “go against the very core of what Morning Star was founded on.”

The ranch has served more than 1,300 boys with behavioral problems, including many who had been involved with the state’s juvenile justice or child welfare systems.

Matherly said in the suit that he did not remember having been subjected to the abuse until he was contacted by a Spokesman-Review reporter in June and August 2005, prior to the publication of a lengthy article about the ranch. Former Spokesman-Review reporter Benjamin Shors reported and wrote those stories.

“After that conversation … specific recollections of various sexual abuses, threats and violence in conjunction with sexual abuse flooded back to Plaintiff’s conscious mind,” the suit said. Prior to those conversations, the suit said, Matherly had “completely suppressed his memories of his abuse at MSBR.” Matherly’s suit accuses former staff member William Condon, now deceased, of sodomizing him and several other boys with long-stemmed flowers and a jar of Vaseline when they were sick with the measles.

Staff members allegedly took photographs of the boys and kept them, using them to sexually embarrass and demean the boys, the suit claims.

The suit accuses former Morning Star Administrator the Rev. Joseph Weitensteiner of physical, but not sexual, abuse. It says the priest shattered “a heavy, institutional dining plate” over Matherly’s head “when he could not eat his vegetables.”

As a result of the abuse, Matherly became self-abusive and dysfunctional and suffers from multiple anxiety disorders, the suit alleges.

Matherly is seeking unspecified damages, according to the suit.