PHILADELPHIA (PA)
PennLive
12/13/2005, 11:34 a.m. ET
By MARYCLAIRE DALE
The Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A Navy retiree sued a Roman Catholic diocese Tuesday over a decades-old priest sex-abuse claim, saying his years of military service stopped the clock on the statute of limitations.
David Irvin, 41, of Kentucky, said he was abused for several years starting in 1969 — when he was 6 — by the late Rev. Robert Caparelli of St. Mary's Catholic Church in Old Forge, in northeastern Pennsylvania.
The abuse took place at the home of Caparelli's parents, who lived near Irvin's family, the suit alleges.
Caparelli was indicted on 26 counts of child sexual abuse in 1991 and was convicted of rape and other charges before dying in prison a few years later, the suit states.
Irvin alleges that the Scranton diocese received complaints as early as 1968 that Caparelli had been abusing altar boys, and proceeded to transfer him from parish to parish until 1991.
"The acts of defendant Diocese allowed pedophile predators such as Fr. Caparelli to perpetrate criminal acts of child sexual abuse upon children of its members. This is indicative of a pattern throughout many dioceses of the Roman Catholic Church that has gone on for decades throughout the United States," charged the suit, filed in federal court in Scranton by lawyer Joseph H. Saunders of Pinellas Park, Fla.