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	Clergy Abuse Suit Can Go to Federal Court By Beth Miller News Journal January 24, 2008 http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080124/NEWS/801240392/1006/NEWS A federal judge ruled Wednesday that U.S. District Court was an appropriate place for Robert Quill to file his clergy sexual abuse suit. Attorneys for the Rev. Francis G. DeLuca, the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington and St. Elizabeth Church had asked Judge Sue L. Robinson to dismiss the case. They argued that the Child Victim's Act -- the new Delaware law that eliminated the civil statute of limitations in child sexual abuse cases and allowed Quill to file his 35-year-old allegations -- specifically mentions Superior Court, not federal court, as the place to file such suits. Robinson ruled that nothing in the law forbids federal court and that, in the Quill case, federal court was an appropriate venue. In court papers, DeLuca has denied Quill's allegations that the priest sexually abused him more than 300 times from 1968 to 1975 in several states. When similar allegations arose in 1993, the Diocese of Wilmington allowed DeLuca to retire to his hometown of Syracuse, N.Y. Earlier this year, he pleaded guilty to charges he had molested a teenage family member in Syracuse over several years. He was sentenced to 60 days in jail and six years of probation by a Syracuse City Court judge. Shortly after DeLuca's arrest in 2006, Bishop Michael A. Saltarelli released the names of 20 diocesan priests against whom the diocese had substantiated allegations of child sexual abuse. Last week, Saltarelli was dismissed as a defendant in the Quill case. He had been named in case diocesan property was deeded in his name as it is in many other dioceses, attorneys said. Such is not the case in the Diocese of Wilmington, they said, so Saltarelli was dismissed from the case. Quill, a 1973 graduate of St. Elizabeth High who now lives in Florida, served as supervisory staff attorney for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta until 2002, when his psychiatrist placed him on "full and permanent" disability because of severe post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. Trial is scheduled to begin in August. Contact Beth Miller at 324-2784 or bmiller@delawareonline.com.
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