BishopAccountability.org
	Priest Abuse Trial Reconvenes in Burlington Burlington Free Press November 26, 2007 http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071126/NEWS/71126033 The retrial in the case of a man who claims the state's Roman Catholic diocese failed to protect him from being sexually molested by a priest in 1977 got under way today in Chittenden County Superior Court in Burlington. James Turner, of Newport Beach, Va., claims former Rev. Alfred Willis performed a sex act on him in a Latham, N.Y., motel room after a religious ceremony for Turner's brother, who was about to become a priest. The diocese does not dispute the molestation occurred, but told jurors during opening arguments today that it had no previous evidence at the time of the incident that Willis might molest children. Turner was 16 at the time. "The diocese thought about the same of Willis at the time that the Turner family did," diocesan attorney Tom McCormick told the jurors. Turner's lawyer, Jerome O'Neill, contended the diocese in 1977 was engaged in an ongoing policy of protecting priests from liability for misconduct and ignoring warning signals about problem priests, including Willis. "The diocese did a wholly inadequate job of investigating who Alfred Willis was," O'Neill told the jurors. The first trial was declared a mistrial in June what the judge in the case ruled that diocesan lawyers had ignored a pre-trial order and delved into areas at the trial that it was told it could not pursue. Willis settled separately with Willis last year.
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