PENNSYLVANIA
The Morning Call
April 20, 2006
By Pervaiz Shallwani
Of The Morning Call
A lawsuit filed Wednesday on behalf of a 13-year-old boy says he was sexually abused by a Montgomery County priest repeatedly over three years, most recently in early 2005.
The suit accuses the Rev. Edward Kuczynski of inappropriately touching the boy while he was a student at St. Peter's School in Pottstown. It also names the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, Cardinal Justin Rigali and school Principal Joyce Babin as defendants and accuses them of covering up the abuse.
Filed in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court, the suit is the latest effort by lawyer Jay Abramowitch of Wyomissing, Berks County, to uncover sexual abuse by priests in Pennsylvania. In the past two years, he and lawyer Richard Serbin of Altoona have filed more than 200 suits against the archdiocese, the Allentown Diocese and other dioceses in the state.
''Rigali instituted these strict codes of conduct to protect children, and obviously that was just a subterfuge,'' Abramowitch said. ''I think this suit demonstrates that these so-called codes of conduct, they are just looking the other way.''