MONTANA
Independent Record
By The Associated Press - 02/22/06
HAVRE (AP) — Friends and family members of a late Roman Catholic priest accused of sexually abusing a boy in Alaska are speaking out in his defense, saying they don’t believe the priest they knew would have molested anyone.
‘‘We will do anything to clear his name,’’ said Marcia Kostas of Great Falls, the niece of the Rev. Bernard McMeel. ‘‘We don’t believe for a minute the allegations against him.’’
McMeel, who died in the early 1990s, is one of two Jesuit priests named in a lawsuit filed earlier this month by a man identified only as Jake Doe 1.
He alleges McMeel and the Rev. Andrew Eordogh molested him when he was a child living in Alaska. Eordogh has since retired and now lives in Hungary.