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	Vermont Sex Abuse Trial Set for Former Local Priest WSBT April 28, 2008 http://www.wsbt.com/news/local/18324689.html BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) — The Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington, which still faces two dozen lawsuits alleging sexual misconduct by priests, will see the next one, involving a former local priest, come to trial next week. In it, former altar boy Perry Babel, 40, of Denver, accuses the diocese of failing to protect him from former Rev. Edward Paquette, saying church officials transferred Paquette to Burlington without telling anyone he'd been accused of molesting boys elsewhere in Vermont, Indiana and another state. Paquette worked as a Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend priest in the 1960s before seeking reassignment to Vermont. In a 1972 letter to Diocese of Burlington officials, then-Indiana Bishop Leo Pursley said Paquette had had three homosexual episodes involving young boys and suggested Paquette be assigned to an institutional chaplaincy instead of a parish where he might relapse. Vince LaBarbera, a spokesman for the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, told The Tribune in 2006 that Paquette served two parishes in South Bend, one in Elkhart and another in Decatur, Ind. He faced sexual misconduct allegations during that time, LaBarbera said. During those years between 1964 and 1971, the priest worked at St. Anthony de Padua and Our Lady of Hungary parishes in South Bend. Paquette also worked at St. Vincent de Paul in Elkhart; and St. Mary of the Assumption, in Decatur, Ind., LaBarbera said. In court papers filed in connection with the Babel case, plaintiff's attorney Jerome F. O'Neill disclosed an accusation that Diocese of Burlington Bishop Salvatore Matano threatened to sue the Indiana diocese it felt shared the blame for a Paquette sex case in Vermont that was settled for $965,000. The Diocese of Burlington put Paquette in several parishes, where he allegedly abused children, according to court documents. After agreeing to the $965,000 settlement, Matano wrote to the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend to seek reimbursement, saying the Indiana diocese had never told the Vermont diocese about Paquette's history in a prior assignment in Massachusetts. The May 5 trial, in Chittenden County Superior Court, will be the second to go before a Vermont jury. In December, a jury that heard the case of a former Northeast Kingdom man who sued the diocese over his molestation found negligence by the church but gave him only $15,000 in compensatory damages.
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