By Lisa D. Welsh and Jay Whearley
Telegram & Gazette
December 21, 2007
http://www.telegram.com/article/20071221/NEWS/712210662/1101
Out-of-court settlements have been reached in three sexual abuse lawsuits filed in Texas against convicted child molester Thomas H. Teczar, who was stripped of his priestly duties and forced to leave the Catholic Diocese of Worcester in the mid-1980s amid numerous allegations that he sexually assaulted young boys in at least three Central Massachusetts parishes.
Mr. Teczar was convicted in March of the aggravated sexual assault of an 11-year-old boy at a parish in Ranger, Texas, where he was serving as priest starting in 1993. Mr. Teczar was sentenced to 25 years in prison. The victim testified during the trial that his attacker used threats, persuasion and the use of his Mercedes automobile to entice him, and at one point told the boy he would have him taken away from his mother if he didn't continue to have sex and keep it secret.
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He was charged in Eastland, Texas with the crime in 2002 and freed on $30,000 bail, then rearrested in December that year at a home he maintained in Dudley, Mass., on a warrant alleging he was a fugitive from justice. He returned on his own to Texas for his arraignment.
Terms of the lawsuit settlements, which were reached Wednesday, were not announced at the request of the three victim-plaintiffs, according to the Diocese of Fort Worth. In 2005, that diocese paid $4.15 million to settle two other lawsuits against it, Mr. Teczar, and the Worcester Diocese, which did not pay any money in the settlement.
Tahira Khan Merritt of Dallas, lawyer for the three plaintiffs who settled this week, also represents a fourth client who alleges he was sexually abused by Mr. Teczar. The suit involving the fourth plaintiff is scheduled for trial in August.
She has talked with four other men who maintain they were sexually assaulted by Mr. Teczar but are unwilling to take legal action.
The settlements, the lawyer said in an interview yesterday, provide additional closure for the victims. Mr. Teczar's criminal conviction helped, she said, but "they needed the diocese to acknowledge its role in bringing Teczar here and placing him in Ranger as a priest."
Ms. Khan Merritt said the six plaintiffs who filed lawsuits concerning Mr. Teczar were between the ages of 13 and 19 when he allegedly abused them.
Still unanswered, according to the lawyer, is why the bishop of Fort Worth at the time accepted him into that diocese in 1988 when he clearly had been warned by Worcester diocesan officials of potential liability.
"It's the $24 million question," Ms. Khan Merritt has said.
According to documents from the Worcester diocese and depositions gathered in the civil lawsuits against Mr. Teczar in Texas, he exhibited "effeminate manners" before his ordination in the Worcester Diocese in December 1967 and did not "seem well-balanced" while attending seminary in the early 1960s.
Despite those and other warnings, former Worcester Bishop Bernard J. Flanagan sent the seminarian to Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish in Winchendon to be evaluated. The monsignor reported back that he saw "many frequent instances of poor judgment" and his giving free rein to "his own impulses," and recommended against ordination of Mr. Teczar.
Leaving Winchendon, Mr. Teczar went to work at the Nazareth Home for Boys in Leicester in the summer of 1967, but soon was fired for sexual misconduct with boys, according to a deposition from a counselor at the home.
Bishop Flanagan did ordain him, however, and he was assigned to St. Joan of Arc Parish, Worcester, where by 1968 he was accused of sexually abusing a 16-year-old altar boy.
| "He came here because the Catholic Church was moving abusers around. They took a chance that he wouldn't hurt another child. But he did." Tahira Khan Merritt, LAWYER FOR TEXAS PLAINTIFFS ABUSED BY THOMAS H. TECZAR, SHOWN IN 2003 PHOTO |
Mr. Teczar was transferred to St. Mary's Parish in Uxbridge in 1971, where he was accused of sexually abusing three teenage boys, including David Lewcon, who later successfully sued the diocese and Mr. Teczar.
After the Uxbridge allegations, he was transferred in 1972 to St. Ann's Parish, Leicester, then sent by the diocese in 1973 to House of Affirmation in Whitinsville. He was next sent to St. Aloysius Parish, Gilbertville, where he served while undergoing outpatient treatment in Whitinsville.
Mr. Teczar was reassigned to Immaculate Conception Parish, Worcester, in late 1975, and he stayed there until Bishop Timothy P. Harrington moved him to Sacred Heart Parish, Gardner, in 1980. In Gardner, a family attending the parish alleged that Mr. Teczar attempted to sexually abuse their 15-year-old son and demanded Bishop Harrington remove him from the ministry.
He later was sent for residential therapy to a treatment facility in California, remaining there until October 1985. A therapist there wrote that Mr. Teczar had long-standing issues with sexual identity and recommended that he take a leave from the priesthood.
Bishop Harrington in 1986 finally barred Mr. Teczar from functioning as a priest in the Worcester diocese and suggested that the priest find another bishop to take him in, according to a letter the bishop sent to Bishop Daniel P. Reilly in Norwich, Conn. Bishop Harrington said that Mr. Teczar would no longer be allowed an assignment in the Worcester diocese.
"I think the Worcester Diocese acted in conformity with the Catholic Church on a national level of moving priests from region to region and diocese to diocese," Ms. Kahn Merritt said from Fort Worth during a break in the mediation. "He came here because the Catholic Church was moving abusers around. They took a chance that he wouldn't hurt another child. But he did."
However, Raymond Delisle, spokesman for the Worcester diocese, denied any suggestion that the diocese attempted to "shuffle" or "dump" Mr. Teczar off to another jurisdiction. He pointed to the Worcester diocese warning the Fort Worth diocese about problems with Mr. Teczar and the fact that Worcester had stripped him of his priestly duties.
In 2004, Mr. Delisle said, the local diocese formally petitioned the Vatican to laicize — defrock—Mr. Teczar. That petition is pending.
Contact: jwhearley@telegram.com
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