Raised in suburban Edina, his mother stayed at home while his father worked as a furniture salesman for Dayton's department store.
[1] His children were raised in the Roman Catholic faith, although Anderson became an atheist in the 1980s while he worked with legal cases involving sexual abuse.
[4] In 1984, after church officials denied in depositions that they had known of the priest's history of sexual abuse, the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis reportedly offered over $1 million to settle the case.
Anderson, who was troubled by the church's insistence on confidentiality, talked Riedle out of taking the offer, and instead filed suit and called a press conference.
[9][10] In a settlement with Saint John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota, Anderson stipulated that the names of 17 monks with "credible allegations of sexual abuse"[11] be released in addition to an undisclosed dollar amount on behalf of his nine plaintiffs.
[1] Since the 1980s, Jeff Anderson & Associates have filed thousands of cases on behalf of survivors of childhood sexual abuse, including that of John Doe 1-22 v. Roman Catholic Bishop of Fall River, Diocese of Crookston, Servants of the Paraclete, and James Porter.
[2] Some in the legal community refer to his role as co-counsel in so many abuse cases around the country as "the Jeff Anderson franchise system.
"[14] "Rather than settle out of court and seal the record, Jeff has learned the church is impervious to all but the most intense pressure..." wrote Anson D. Shupe, a sociologist at Indiana University-Purdue University, author of the book Rogue Clerics: The Social Problem of Clergy Deviance.
[24][25] The company attempted to make the files public, but were forced to return the copies they had obtained after a court sided with the Boy Scouts of America in 2019.