By Andrew Marra
Palm Beach Post
October 26, 2006
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/politics/content/local_news/
epaper/2006/10/26/a6a_FOLEY_ALTARBOY_1026.html
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Another South Florida man says he was sexually abused as a young boy by the Rev. Anthony Mercieca, the priest who former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley accused last week of molesting him in the 1960s.
In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Miami-Dade County, the man alleged that Mercieca molested him once in the late 1970s after altar boy practice at St. James Catholic Church in North Miami.
The man, who was not identified in the lawsuit, did not report his claims of sexual abuse until he saw a picture of Mercieca circulated on news reports last week.
"This time I could not be quiet," he said in a statement.
The lawsuit comes almost a week after Mercieca's name was first linked to Foley's allegation that he had been molested by a priest as a teenager.
Mercieca, 69, now lives on Gozo, a Maltese island off the coast of Italy. He served as a pastor at eight churches in South Florida between 1965 and 2002, including two in Palm Beach County. He grew close to Foley while supervising him as an altar boy at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Lake Worth in the 1960s.
Foley's attorney, Gerald Richman, said he could not comment specifically on the suit. But he said it was likely to quiet critics who speculated Foley fabricated or exaggerated his abuse claims to distract from the revelation that he sent sexually explicit Internet messages to former congressional pages.
The man who says he was abused by Mercieca is suing the Archdiocese of Miami for compensation, arguing that the archdiocese should have done more to protect him.
Mercieca has said that he skinny-dipped and entered saunas nude with Foley. The Archdiocese of Miami said it had received no previous report of misconduct by Mercieca. It said an internal investigation will be started into the new claim, and law enforcement officials will be notified.
A spokesman for the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office said charges are unlikely because the alleged crime occurred too long ago to be prosecuted.
The victim's attorney, Jeffrey Herman, said the man is now a 40-year-old South Florida parent who has been divorced at least twice. He said the sexual abuse the man suffered has caused depression and occasional suicidal urges.
The man left the Catholic Church, causing a rift with his parents that was never bridged, Herman said.
"His parents never understood why he left the church," he said. "It was a chasm with his parents that lasted until they died a few years ago. They never knew the truth."
The lawsuit alleges that the sexual abuse occurred in the late 1970s, when the man was 12 or 13.
According to the suit, the boy rode his bike to altar boy practice. Afterward, Mercieca, whom he knew as Father Tony, asked the boy to join him on a bike ride.
They pedaled around the neighborhood surrounding St. James. As they were returning, the alleged victim asked Mercieca if there were real bells in the church's top-floor bell tower.
Mercieca invited him to the top floor so he could see for himself. When they got there, the boy sat down. Mercieca unzipped the boy's shorts, fondled him and performed oral sex, the suit says. Then he told the alleged victim not to tell anyone what had happened.
The man said in the statement that he tried for years to repress the memory, but was unable to continue in silence when Foley's allegations were made public.
"I thought I could put it away in the back of my head and forget it," he said. "But when I saw his picture last Friday, all of my nightmares came back."
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