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	Woman Testifies about Sexual Abuse by a Church's Youth Ministry Leader By Bruce Lambert New York Times April 19, 2007 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/19/nyregion/19church.html?_r=1&oref=slogin Garden City, N.Y., April 18 — Justice R. Bruce Cozzens Jr. discreetly handed tissues to the witness on the stand Wednesday. She tried to stifle sobs and wiped away tears while she told of being sexually abused as a teenager by a Catholic youth ministry leader in the early 1990s. As the witness repeatedly struggled to regain her composure, another young woman, in the back of the State Supreme Court room here, also cried. She said she had been victimized in the late 1990s by the same man, in another parish. Later in the hallway, the two women — who had never met before this court session — cried again, this time together while hugging. "I'm sorry," the witness, 31, said to the other woman, 23. Huddled around them, their respective parents tried to console the young women, and each other. Lawyers and other bystanders watched silently and appeared awkward. This was the third and, so far, the most emotionally trying day in the trial of a lawsuit filed against the Catholic Church by a young man and the young woman who was crying in the back of the courtroom. They say they were repeatedly abused, starting at age 15, by Matthew Maiello, then the director of the rock-music Mass and the youth ministry at St. Raphael's Roman Catholic Church in East Meadow. The plaintiffs say the abuses occurred in the church, the convent, the rectory, the school, a house, a motel, a car and a boat. The activities included group sex, some of which they say Mr. Maiello recorded on videotape, which the police seized. Mr. Maiello, 33, pleaded guilty in 2003 to rape and sodomy involving four teenagers, including the two who are suing, and served two years in prison. Although he is a defendant in the civil suit, he is not contesting it. The suit focuses on St. Raphael's and its pastor, the Rev. Thomas Haggerty, who hired and supervised Mr. Maiello, and the Diocese of Rockville Centre, which serves Long Island. Those defendants blame Mr. Maiello entirely and say they were unaware of his crimes. But the suit, which seeks $150 million, claims that the church ignored warnings about Mr. Maiello and failed to check his background and monitor him. Underscoring that issue, the young witness who said she was an earlier victim and her parents testified that they had complained to church representatives, to no avail. They did not sue and are not parties to this civil case. "He had taken me away from my parents, and he abused me," starting when she was 16, the woman testified. "He made me a shell of a person." Mr. Maiello was controlling and "very perverse," she said. He forced her to leave home the day she graduated from high school to be at his beck and call, and even "forced me to have sex with several other people," including strangers, she said. After his daughter came under Mr. Maiello's spell, her father testified Wednesday, he asked a priest to stop Mr. Maiello's planned move to another church. The father said he had argued that "Matthew Maiello had no business working with young people," but "absolutely nothing" came of his pleas. The woman's mother testified that she complained to another church youth director, but was also ignored. After the daughter freed herself from Mr. Maiello, she said she eventually complained to yet another youth minister who knew him, but her concerns were brushed aside. The church's lawyer, Brian Davey, asked the woman and her parents if they had taken their complaints further, and they said they had not. The theme of prior warnings continued with the next witness, Connell Friel, a former business manager at St. Raphael's. Father Haggerty had voiced doubts about hiring Mr. Maiello because of "some boundary issues" in separating his professional and personal lives, Mr. Friel testified. "There was some discussion about touching," he said. Mr. Friel said he had advised against the hiring, arguing that the staff should be "clean as the driven snow." Mr. Maiello was hired anyway in 1999. Later complaints emerged, including one that "he might have had a girlfriend in the youth group, and of course that raised red flags," Mr. Friel said. After a special internal meeting, Father Haggerty imposed new rules that Mr. Maiello should never be alone with a youth and should not have any contact beyond "a handshake." Within days of that memo, the plaintiffs say, Mr. Maiello was abusing them again.
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