Burlington Free Press
August 20, 2008
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080820/NEWS02/80820019/-1/NEWS05
The alleged victim in the clergy sex abuse trial in Burlington testified Wednesday that the Rev. Edward Paquette molested him at his first altar boy training session at Christ the King Church in the fall of 1977. “I was a little confused by it,” the former altar boy, now 40 and a resident of Waitsfield, told the six-man, six-woman jury. “I wasn’t quite sure why he’d do that.”
The man said he was in the sacristy at the church, a room near the pulpit, and was clothed when Paquette picked him up and held him with one hand over his genitals and one hand over his mouth and swinging him in the air for about a minute.
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| Defense attorney Kaveh Shahi (right) sits with Monsignor Salvatore Matano while the Rev.Roland Rivard testifies in Superior Court in Burlington at a trial in which the Roman Catholic Diocese is accused of being responsible for the molestation of a former altar boy, on Wednesday, August 20, 2008 Photo by ALISON REDLICH |
The man said he was nine years old at the time and a fourth grade student at a Catholic elementary school next door. He estimated being molested by Paquette between 20 and 50 times over the next six months. The Free Press does not identify the alleged victims of sexual abuse without their consent.
The man said he didn’t talk with anyone about the incidents, other than other altar boys he said Paquette groped in the same way. He said he kept quiet for years out of shame and because he’d been taught not to question a priest’s actions.
“It wasn’t something that really hurt,” he said of the molestations. “I figured that if a priest was doing this, it was probably OK that it was happening.”
Earlier in the day, two priests who have served as principals at parochial high schools in Vermont, told the jury they would never have hired someone with a history of sexually abusing children to teach in their schools.
“No, I would not have,” said the Rev. Roland Rivard, a former principal of Rice Memorial High School in South Burlington. Asked why not, Rivard said “Because of the threat of potential harm to the students.
The Rev. Richard LaValley, a former principal at Mount St. Joseph Academy in Rutland, agreed. “I wouldn’t want to take that risk,” he said.
The Waitsfield man is suing the diocese, claiming it was responsible for the abuse he incurred. According to church records shown the jury in the case, the diocese hired Paquette knowing he had molested boys at parishes in Massachusetts and Indiana before coming to Vermont.
Diocesan lawyers have argued then-Bishop John Marshall decided to employ Paquette based on the advise of church psychologists and psychiatrists who believed Paquette’s sexual problems were cured.
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