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	Bishop: 'Wrong' to Hire Accused Priest Burlington Free Press December 11, 2008 http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20081211/NEWS/81211016 Bishop Salvatore Matano, in videotaped testimony presented today to the jury in a clerical abuse trial in Burlington, reluctantly agreed that the late Bishop John Marshall made a bad decision when he agreed to hire a priest with a history of molesting boys. "I think that the actions he took, as time has unfolded, were wrong," Matano said in a portion of an Oct. 2 interview conducted by Jerome O'Neill, the lead attorney in 19 lawsuits filed in Chittenden Superior Court by former altar boys abused by the Rev. Edward Paquette. Matano said he believes Marshall hired Paquette, who had previously molested boys in Indiana and Massachusetts, as a favor to an Indiana bishop and on the advise of church psychologists, who persuaded Marshall that Paquette's sexual deviancy had been cured. "I believe Bishop Marshall thought that with the direction he (Paquette) was being given that he would not repeat his crime," Matano said. Marshall banished Paquette from priestly duties in 1978 after parents of several altar boys at Christ the King Church in Burlington complained that Paquette was molesting their sons. The case being tried involves claims by a Takoma Park, Md., man that as an 11 year-old altar boy at the church he was twice molested by Paquette. The trial is in its seventh day.
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