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	Man: Priest Who Fondled Foley Abused Me in '70s Associated Press, carried in The News-Press October 25, 2006 http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061025/NEWS01/61025063/1075 Aventura — A former altar boy tried to forget his alleged sexual abuse by a Catholic priest in the 1970s, but could not ignore it any longer when the clergyman said last week he fondled a teenage Mark Foley, the man's attorney said today. The man, now 40, said in a lawsuit that the Rev. Anthony Mercieca abused him when he was about 12 or 13 years old. He was an altar boy at St. James Catholic Church and still lives in South Florida, attorney Jeffrey Herman said. The man is identified in the lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Miami only as John Doe No. 26. He seeks more than $10 million in damages. In a statement Herman released at his office in the Miami suburb of Aventura, the man said "all of my nightmares came back" when Mercieca's picture appeared on the news last week. Mercieca was interviewed about claims from Foley, a former Republican congressman, that the priest had molested him in the 1960s. "I feel so bad that there are more victims out there that have had the same thing done to them," the man said. Mercieca, 69, now lives on the Maltese island of Gozo. No one answered the phone today at his home. His lawyer, Alfred Grech, did not return calls to his cell phone. In multiple interviews last week, Mercieca denied having sexual intercourse with Foley, but did acknowledge being nude with him as a boy. He also denied having sex with any underage children. Asked about the latest allegations, archdiocese spokeswoman Mary Ross Agosta said: "Any of this type of behavior by Father Mercieca was unknown to the archdiocese and we had absolutely no information to indicate that the father did or would engage in any type of inappropriate or abusive behavior." On Friday, the archdiocese barred Mercieca from all church work as it investigates Foley's claim that the clergyman molested him when Foley was an altar boy at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Lake Worth in 1967. Mercieca is now retired and does not serve in any parish on the island, but regularly celebrates Mass and hears confession in the cathedral, according to the Archdiocese of Malta. The Maltese church is also investigating. Herman said his client and Mercieca took a bicycle ride together one day in 1978 after altar boy practice, then returned to the church and climbed to the top of the bell tower, where the abuse allegedly occurred. "While they're in this room, Father Mercieca started to ... fondle him. He pushed his hand away, but Father Mercieca said, 'No, it's OK,' and he unzipped his pants and then performed oral sex on him," Herman said. Mercieca offered to take the boy on another bike ride the following week after practice, but the boy refused, Herman said. "He left the church, and essentially left the church for the rest of his life," Herman said. "He was too scared and too embarrassed to talk to his parents about it." Mercieca served as an assistant pastor at the church from 1975 to 1985, according to church records. He was also reassigned several times within the archdiocese until leaving for Malta in 2002, Herman said. Foley resigned from Congress last month after he was confronted with sexually explicit computer communications he had sent to male teenage pages who worked on Capitol Hill. He has since entered a 30-day rehabilitation program for alcoholism, according to his attorneys.
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