CHICAGO (IL)
The Herald News
By Ted Slowik
staff writer
CHICAGO — An Arizona man says in a lawsuit filed Thursday that two priests of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Joliet sexually abused him beginning when he was 11 years old in 1975.
Once, 43-year-old Tim Greco says, he was in a shower with the Rev. Philip Dedera in the rectory at St. Pius X Church in Lombard when the Rev. Richard Bennett walked in and discovered the priest and boy naked together. Greco says Dedera repeatedly abused him for more than a year, and that Bennett molested him once.
Bennett is pastor of Holy Spirit Church at 111th Street and Book Road in Naperville. Dedera was removed from ministry by Joliet Bishop Joseph Imesch in 2002 amid reports that he sexually abused other boys.
Greco says he reported the incidents to the diocese in 2004, and recalls a phone conversation he had with Imesch two years ago.