In the summer of 1985 the National Conference of Catholic Bishops held a closed meeting at St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minn., a major center of the Order of St. Benedict in the United States, to address the problem of sexual abuse of children by clergy. The bishops were provided with a confidential report -- a copy of which INSIGHT has obtained -- that not only acknowledged a "problem" but laid out plans to cope with it by, among other things, increasing specialized sex-therapy clinics for priests.

It is an ironic twist in view of recent news stories about pedophilia and homosexuality among Catholic clergy that this meeting of American bishops 16 years ago somehow managed to overlook alleged wrongdoing at the very meeting place of the conclave. INSIGHT has learned that nearly a dozen of the abbey's Benedictine monks since have been accused of sexually abusing minors or adults in their spiritual care. Of these, at least eight are known to have confessed to such acts.

St. John's is a nationally known center of liturgical revolution, redirecting Catholic liturgy away from worship of a transcendent God to community-centered participation. Thousands of Catholic parishes use its manuals weekly.

An investigation by this magazine suggests that nearly two dozen cases have been settled privately by the Roman Catholic Church there and that, according to victims, parents, lawyers and priests, there are likely to be more cases. These are cases that, as with the scandals in New York and Boston, could unfold into a worse nightmare than currently even imagined. Meanwhile, ironically, the document given to the National Conference of Catholic Bishops so many years ago could open the floodgates against the church for its failure to protect children and other sexual innocents entrusted to the care of its clergy by a system that was warned but failed to deal rigorously with the widespread problem of sexual predators.

As INSIGHT goes to press, the Vatican has responded to a media frenzy by summoning the entire conference of American bishops to Rome for a meeting with Pope John Paul II. But even now little attention is being paid to the victims and the ordeals they have suffered for years. Here, in an exclusive report, Insight looks at the personal stories and allegations of sexual exploitation at the hands of just one priest, the Rev. Richard Eckroth, a veteran clergyman accused of molesting both little boys and young girls over many years.

This is their story -- the story of youngsters called the "Sauna Kids." It developed between 1971 and 1976 when "Father Richard" invited scores of children in groups of four to six for weekends at a remote log cabin on Lake Swensen near Bemidji, Minn., owned by St. John's Abbey. These youngsters ranged in age from 7 to 13. They tell INSIGHT they saw a happy time turn into the nightmare of a life dealing with painful memories of what occurred at the abbey's cabin where, they claim, they suffered abuse at the hands of their trusted priest. While Father Richard never has admitted in public to any of the allegations of sexual abuse brought against him, INSIGHT has obtained confidential medical records maintained by the abbey in which church-run therapy clinic doctors said that he engaged in inappropriate touching of children and encouraged them inappropriately to touch him.

Medical teams reported to the head of the abbey that they could not prove or get the cleric to admit the overt allegations. But they found that details of at least two internally reported incidents of alleged sexual abuse by Father Richard were so strikingly similar that "We believe there is a strong possibility that Father Eckroth has engaged in sexually inappropriate contact with these people." The recommendation was that Father Eckroth have "no unsupervised contact with minors" -- even after a stay of several months at one of the half-dozen "sex" clinics run by the Catholic church.

Among victims willing to go on the record about molestation charges against this monk, the alleged modus operandi of Father Richard is remarkably consistent. For example, according to one of the Sauna Kids, much of the discussion during the three-hour drive to the log cabin revolved around the priest's explanation about the sauna, a building detached from the main cabin where the clergyman insisted on nudity.

"On the drive to the cabin," explains Betsy Westerhoff, "Father Richard told us we'd be taking a sauna, and he said it would be fun -- the best thing we'd be doing up there -- and afterward we'd go swimming in the lake. I was 11 years old and didn't even know what a sauna was, but he told us that we had to be naked in the sauna."

Westerhoff says, "That bothered my sister and me, and we asked if we could wear our swimsuits. Father Richard told us that we couldn't wear our suits because it gets too hot and the metal clasps on the back of the suits could burn us. He said that he had `bands' at the cabin that we could wrap around us. I remember thinking at the time that the only `band' I knew of was a rubber band and I couldn't imagine how that would cover us. When we got to the cabin it turned out that the `bands' were strips of cloth that weren't long enough to fit around our chests. I wore my bathing suit but left the clasps unhooked so I wouldn't get burned. I remember swimming in the lake afterward, and one of the other girls was naked and she was diving off of Father Richard's shoulders. I remember feeling ashamed that some of the kids didn't have their clothes on."