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	$4.2M Lien Sought on Diocese Land By Sam Hemingway Burlington Free Press December 19, 2008 http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20081219/NEWS02/812190309/-1/NEWS05 Lawyers for the former altar boy who won a $3.6 million award in a clergy sexual abuse trial this week asked a Chittenden Superior Court judge Thursday to place a lien on 10 acres of Burlington church property worth $6.9 million. The property, located at 329 North Ave., is land directly south of the headquarters for the state's Roman Catholic diocese and stretches from North Avenue to the city's bicycle path near Lake Champlain. No buildings are on the land. "It is standard procedure after obtaining judgment to seek security in order to be certain you can get the judgment paid once the appeals have run their course," Jerome O'Neill, the attorney for the former altar boy said. According to the court filing, the request for what is called a writ of attachment asked Judge Dennis Pearson to place a $4,239,150 lien on the land. The figure includes the amount of the jury award plus $646,650 in interest necessary to cover the expected 18 months it will take for any appeal of the jury verdict to run its course. David Navari, 43, of Takoma Park, Md., the former altar boy, has said he is willing to donate all the money from the jury award to a private trust to fund Catholic education for the children of needy families in the Burlington area if the diocese is willing to publish photos and information of pedophile priests on its Web site and seek to defrock them. Navari was molested twice by the Rev. Edward Paquette at Christ the King Church in Burlington in 1977. He sued the diocese, saying it was to blame for the abuse because it hired Paquette and brought him to Vermont knowing he had molested boys in two other states. Paquette, who lives in Westfield, Mass., was not a defendant in the case. The $3.6 million verdict, reached by the jury after a nine-day trial, included $192,500 in damages to compensate Navari for the harm done to him and $3.4 million in punitive damages to punish the diocese for employing pedophile priests like Paquette. In May, after another former altar boy molested by Paquette at the church won a $8.7 million damage award, O'Neill obtained a $10,266,000 lien on the diocese's headquarters at 351 North Ave. That case is on appeal before the Vermont Supreme Court. Contact Sam Hemingway at 660-1850 or e-mail at shemingway@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com.
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