DENVER (CO)
Denver Post
By Eric Gorski
Denver Post Staff Writer
A priest of the Denver Roman Catholic Archdiocese who ended his career working as a hospital chaplain in Southern California is named in one of the hundreds of clergy sexual-abuse lawsuits clogging California courts.
The suit was filed in 2003 when California temporarily lifted the statute of limitations on child sex- abuse lawsuits. It accuses the Rev. Leonard A. Abercrombie of molesting an altar boy who served Mass at the Los Angeles-area veterans hospital where Abercrombie began working after relocating from Colorado in the 1970s.
The court filing fills in more gaps about claims against Abercrombie, who during his years in Colorado worked in parishes in Denver and small plains towns and as a counselor at a boys' camp. He died in 1994 at age 73.
Three Colorado men - a law-enforcement officer, a retired lawyer and a mental-health official - told The Denver Post last week that Abercrombie molested them before he moved out of state. The men did not tell anyone until many years later.