By Jessica Lussenhop

This story contains graphic descriptions of sexual abuse.

There were so many details in the women’s reports to law enforcement that were hard for me to read. That they were just little girls when it happened. That a man many knew as the “fun uncle” had touched them sexually under their skirts and tops. And that it happened in church or while swimming at the lake or during games of hide-and-seek. They were as young as 5 years old, according to the police reports. Some could even remember what they were wearing when it happened: a fluffy multicolored skirt; a pair of jeans with purple flowers on them.

But by the time my co-reporter from the Minnesota Star Tribune, Andy Mannix, and I got those accounts — spanning from the early 1990s to the 2010s — the girls’ abuser, C

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