By Sam Hemingway
Burlington Free Press
November 27, 2007
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071127/NEWS01/711270308/1009/NEWS05
The case of a man who says the state's Roman Catholic diocese failed to protect him from being sexually molested by a priest in 1977 went on trial Monday in Burlington for the second time in five months.
James Turner, 46, of Virginia Beach, Va., claims former Rev. Alfred Willis performed a sex act on him in a Latham, N.Y., motel room following a religious ceremony for Turner's brother, who was about to become a priest.
Turner also alleges Willis attempted to repeat the molestation at the Turner family home in Derby three months later but that Turner fought him off.
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| Judge Matthew Katz (right) confers with two diocesan lawyers (left) and two plaintiff's lawyers during a break in opening arguments on the first day of the second trial in James Turner's lawsuit against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington in Chittenden County Superior Court in Burlington on Monday. From left: Tom McCormick, David Cleary, Jerome O'Neill, Judge Katz and John Evers. Photo by Glenn Russell |
The diocese does not dispute the incidents occurred but a church lawyer told jurors Monday that it had no evidence at the time of the incidents that Willis might molest children. Turner was 16 at the time.
"The diocese did not know anything more about Willis at the time than the Turner family did," diocesan attorney Tom McCormick told the jurors.
Turner's lawyer, Jerome O'Neill, contended the diocese in the past had systematically ignored warning signals about priest sexual abuse of children and worked to prevent disclosure of the misconduct to protect priests and the diocese from lawsuits.
"The church hid the fact that there were priests who molested children," O'Neill told the jurors. "The church did nothing to protect the children."
Turner sat quietly next to his lawyers as the second trial unfolded Monday, a couple of times dabbing his eyes with a handkerchief. He is expected to testify on his own behalf later this week.
The first trial on Turner's claims was declared a mistrial in June. Judge Ben Joseph stopped the trial after ruling that diocesan lawyers had ignored a pre-trial order prohibiting discussion of an alleged homosexual relationship between Willis and Turner's brother by trying to get Turner to say he blamed his brother for what Willis did to him.
Church lawyers, who accused Joseph of being biased against the diocese, were later ordered by Joseph to pay $112,000 in court costs. Joseph is now serving as judge elsewhere in the state. Judge Matthew Katz presided over Monday's re-trial.
"In large measure, this is what this case is about: What did the diocese know and when did it know about the sexual behavior of Alfred Willis?" Katz told the jury in his remarks just before the lawyers spoke.
O'Neill, in his opening statement, said what happened to Turner was part of a decades-long practice by the diocese of hiring priests despite questionable backgrounds and then covering up their misdeeds.
O'Neill detailed the cases of three priests hired before Willis was ordained. He said the diocese's own records show it had evidence suggesting the three might molest children.
He alleged that in Willis' case, the diocese ignored a potential warning signal about his behavior in seminary school. Willis, who separately settled out of court with Turner, was defrocked by the diocese in the 1985 after it received other reports he had molested children.
"The diocese did a wholly inadequate job of investigating who Alfred Willis was," O'Neill said. "We will be asking for significant money in compensation to balance out the harm the diocese has caused Jim Turner."
McCormick told the jury that the case was solely about what happened between Willis and Turner in 1977, not how the diocese handled the hiring and placement of other priests in the past.
"Alfred Willis gave him oral sex in a roomful of people with family and friends around," McCormick said, describing the presence of between six and eight people sleeping in the New York motel the night of the incident. "Turner was 16 1/2 years old and for whatever reason he was too frightened to tell anyone. He submitted to it."
McCormick said Turner, as a young man, did disclose the abuse to his mother and brother in the early 1980s but did not approach the diocese about the matter until 2002. McCormick said Turner told his girlfriend at the time how they would "buy a convertible" when he won his lawsuit.
Later Monday, O'Neill began putting on his case, showing a videotaped deposition of former Bishop Kenneth Angell and the videotaped testimony from the first trial of Monsignor Wendell Searles, the diocese's former vicar general.
After the jury was recessed for the day, lawyers for the two sides squabbled over the diocese's decision to redact from documents it had given to O'Neill the names of church members who witnessed the placing of parish assets in trusts in 2006.
The move was made amid fears that individual parishes could become a source of payment in the abuse cases after the diocese agreed to a $965,000 settlement in a priest molestation case.
O'Neill is seeking the information to understand the church's finances in connection with his pending request for monetary damages on Turner's behalf, should he win the case. McCormick said O'Neill did not need the witnesses' names, just the figures from the real estate transactions.
Katz put off a ruling on the dispute, but appeared to be leaning in O'Neill's favor. "You could be keeping secret the names of potential witnesses at trial," Katz said.
The trial is expected to last all week.
Contact Sam Hemingway at 660-1850 or shemingway@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com
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