The owner of an Oakland bar who fled to Mexico after he was ordered to pay millions in dollars in judgments for alleged sexual abuse of children in Minnesota has returned to Oakland and plans on reopening his business.
Jason McLean returned to Small Wonder, the bar he owns at 37 Grand Ave., in mid-September after allegedly spending the last two years in Mexico. Some staff had been operating the bar in his absence, but he fired them when he returned, according to Ben Johnson, one of the people who had been working there. The staff had not been operating under McLean’s direction and had been hoping they might be able to wrest control of the business if McLean’s assets were seized as part of his legal and financial troubles, Johnson said.
Signs posted outside the bar this week indicate that he plans to reopen once he’s hired a new staff.
McLean is a central figure in a widespread scandal at the Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis. Six women sued him alleging that he had sexually assaulted them when they were students in the company and McLean was an actor and instructor there in the 1970s and 1980s. The women’s attorney, Jeff Anderson, said that McLean was held in contempt of court in the first woman’s lawsuit for failure to appear. He was then handed a $2.5 million judgment for default. Another of the suits went to trial and a jury awarded the woman $3.6 million.
Anderson said that McLean sold his businesses in Minneapolis and fled to Mexico before the trial started and before his assets could be seized.
In a statement, McLean denied the allegations against him and said that he was cleared by a criminal investigation 35 years ago. The lawsuits against him were unwarranted, he said. “The cost of defense against these unwarranted claims, mostly tried by damaging publicity in the media, destroyed my enterprises in Minnesota and forced me into default,” McLean said.
“I continue to maintain my innocence and hope that the Small Wonder will continue to provide me with an opportunity to demonstrate to the Bay Area my deserved reputation for integrity and excellence in the hospitality business,” McLean added.
The women’s attorney alleges that at the time of the criminal investigation, the women had been coerced into silence. Overall, 17 former students have filed suits against the theater company since the Minnesota Child Victims Act was signed in 2013, which lengthened the statute of limitations for civil cases in child sex abuse cases. Minnesota Public Radio reported that there were allegations against at least 20 different staff members. So far, the single suit against McLean is the only one to go to trial.
The company’s founder and artistic director, John Clark Donahue, admitted to abusing 16 boys over 20 years and was sentenced to one year in a workhouse and 15 years’ probation. He died of cancer in March.