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	Pastor Lied on Stand: Sex Victims By Kieran Crowley New York Post April 18, 2007 http://www.nypost.com/seven/04182007/news/regionalnews/pastor_lied_on_stand__sex_victims_regionalnews_kieran_crowley.htm April 18, 2007 — The two plaintiffs in a $150 million church sex-abuse lawsuit on Long Island angrily accused their former pastor of lying on the stand yesterday. "How does it feel to lie under oath, like you just did?" the female victim asked Father Thomas Haggerty, former pastor of St. Raphael's Church in East Meadow, after court had recessed for the day. The male victim accused Haggerty of fabricating a conversation in which they praised their admitted abuser. Haggerty had testified that the victims never reported to him that they were sexually exploited by former youth minister Matthew Maiello, beginning in 1999, when they were both 15 years old. Maiello forced the teens to have sex with each other and with him, and served two years in prison on sex-abuse charges. Earlier, Haggerty -who holds a degree in social work - admitted that when a 10-year-old girl told him she spotted Maiello kissing the female victim, he forced the child to confront the abuser instead of launching an investigation. The child recanted her assertion after the face-off. Michael Dowd, the victims' lawyer, then asked Haggerty if he had known at the time that the allegation was "100 percent accurate," causing church lawyer Brian Davey to call for a mistrial. The suit alleges the Rockville Centre Diocese was negligent for failing to investigate Maiello's background, which included molestation of another minor at another parish. Contact: kieran.crowley@nypost.com
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