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	Jury Gives Mixed Verdict in Priest Case By Kevin O'Connor Rutland Herald December 5, 2007 http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071205/NEWS04/712050394/1024/NEWS04 A jury ruled late Tuesday night that Vermont's Catholic Church was negligent in supervising a pedophile priest, but, in a surprise twist, said a victim's news-making civil lawsuit was too old to prosecute under the state's statutes of limitations. A 12-person panel deliberated for eight hours in Burlington's Chittenden Superior Court before finding the statewide Roman Catholic Diocese liable for charges against the former Rev. Alfred Willis, a priest in Burlington, Montpelier and Milton before being defrocked in 1985. The jury awarded James Turner, a 47-year-old Northeast Kingdom native, a seemingly small $15,000 in compensatory damages for his claims that the diocese failed to protect him from Willis, who allegedly performed oral sex on the plaintiff when he was 16 and sleeping at a Latham, N.Y., hotel in 1977. But the jury also ruled that Turner was too late in filing his civil lawsuit under Vermont's various statutes of limitations, leaving the possibility that the diocese won't have to pay him anything. The mixed verdict, announced shortly after 9 p.m., left lawyers for both sides pondering their next steps in the first priest misconduct lawsuit to go to trial since news of a child sex-abuse scandal broke five years ago. "It means we look at our options," Turner's lawyer Jerome O'Neill said. "I have a strong belief that if we get the statutes of limitations' question set aside, then we have to decide in the next couple of weeks what we're going to do with a $15,000 verdict." Earlier in the day, O'Neill used his closing statement to compare the diocese to "the piano player in a house of ill repute" who knew what was happening behind the scenes. His colleague John Evers told the jury that Turner should receive as much as $450,000 in compensatory damages to date and up to double that amount when considering the rest of his life. Church lawyer David Cleary, for his part, said he was "gratified" with the trial's conclusion. "We, of course, are saddened by the fact that the whole issue had to be tried," Cleary said. "Obviously, childhood sexual abuse is nothing we enjoy debating, let alone litigating. I would not think there would be any reason for us to appeal." Vermont Catholic Bishop Salvatore Matano, who started work in Vermont in 2005, attended most of the trial. "In these situations, we don't talk about victory," Matano told the Associated Press. "This has been extremely painful, I'm sure, for the plaintiff, for any victim of abuse, for their families and for our diocesan family. It has been a very hard week for all of us to reflect on this subject." Willis, now 63 and living in Leesburg, Va., has denied the charges, but has settled with Turner for an undisclosed "minimal amount," lawyers say. Turner first told his story on the witness stand last June, only to hear a judge declare a mistrial after a church lawyer asked a question banned under a pretrial order. Turner returned to the same courtroom last week to state his case to a new jury of nine women and three men. During the latest trial, Judge Matthew Katz ruled the plaintiff could seek compensatory damages for losses caused by any negligent supervision by the diocese. But the judge added that because the plaintiff couldn't prove the church knew Willis had a prior history of molesting children, it shouldn't face expensive financial punishment through additional punitive damages. The judge noted the only early evidence of problems with Willis was a comment made sometime between 1972 and 1975 from the head of St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore, Md., who called the director of priest development for Vermont's Catholic Church to report a potential worry. "There might be a problem with Alfred Willis in regard to alleged homosexual conduct," someone wrote later in church paperwork. "Investigation failed to reveal substance to this concern … the vocation director judged it unnecessary to convey the matter to the bishop." Cleary made mention of that incident Tuesday in his closing statement to the jury. "It was checked out and investigated and determined to be of no merit," he said. As a result, Cleary argued that although Willis may have abused Turner as a teenager, the diocese wasn't responsible because it had no record the priest was a child abuser until a year after the plaintiff's hotel stay. But Turner's lawyers questioned what the diocese knew, but didn't save in records. They noted that Willis' current personnel files only held summaries of two secret church tribunals from 1981 and 1985 because Vatican law required the church to destroy all other documents 10 years after the priest's defrocking. Even with the $15,000 verdict, the case will prove pricey for Vermont's largest religious denomination, which has resolved at least six similar lawsuits by paying accusers a total of more than $1.5 million in settlement money in the past five years. After last June's mistrial, another judge ordered the diocese to pay Turner $112,450 in court costs. Turner is one of more than 30 recent accusers to take the diocese to court. His case was originally labeled as the first recent priest misconduct lawsuit to reach a Vermont jury. After the mistrial, the national Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests said it was the only one in the country to go to retrial. Turner hugged his wife after hearing the verdict, but declined to comment. "Jim's disappointed by it," his lawyer said, "but he has had the opportunity to expose this diocese and Alfred Willis for what they are. For the first time, people have seen what this diocese knew and did to protect pedophiles over children. It's a moral victory to him in regards to getting that information out." Associated Press writer John Curran contributed to this report. Contact Kevin O'Connor at kevin.oconnor@rutlandherald.com
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