Two former monks at St. John’s Abbey say the monastery fosters a culture of sexual secrecy that comes from the top. Patrick Wall and Richard Sipe joined St. Paul attorney Jeff Anderson on Tuesday to announce a lawsuit alleging a former abbot at St. John’s, Timothy Kelly, abused an altar boy when he was a priest at a church in New York in the 1960s.

Kelly co-founded the Interfaith Sexual Trauma Institute at St. John’s in 1993 as allegations multiplied about sexual abuse by clergy. He died last October. Wall told reporters Kelly was actually unresponsive to clerical sexual abuse. Sipe says the institute was just part of a cover-up of sexual abuse by priests and monks at St. John’s.

An abbey spokesman expressed shock at the allegations and says an investigation has begun.