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  Jury Says Suit Too Late, but Awards $15,000 in Damages

Associated Press, carried in WAVY
December 4, 2007

http://www.wavy.com/Global/story.asp?S=7451910&nav=menu45_2

BURLINGTON, Vt. - A jury in Vermont has found that a Virginia man who sued the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington for his alleged molestation by a priest 30 years ago should have done so years earlier.

After almost eight hours of deliberations, jurors tonight found that the Diocese had failed to adequately supervise now-defrocked Reverend Alfred Willis and awarded his accuser, James Turner, $15,000 in compensatory damages.

But it also found that under the statute of limitations, he should have brought the claim by 1998 -- six years before he did.

Turner of Virginia Beach says the Willis performed a sex act on him in a motel room in New York, in 1977 and attempted to do it again months later in a visit to his family's home.

The 47-year-old sued the church in 2004 for negligent supervision, saying it failed to protect him from Willis.

 
 

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