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	Plaintiff in Abuse Case Recalls Torment by Priest Examiner May 19, 2009 http://www.examiner.com/a-2024745~Plaintiff_in_abuse_case_recalls_torment_by_priest.html SEATTLE (Map, News) - A man suing the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle wept as he testified Tuesday that he thought he was the only boy being abused by a priest. Only when he read newspaper reports in 2005, the 44-year-old jewelry company manager told a King County Superior Court jury, did he learn that Patrick G. O'Donnell was a serial molester who was sent to Seattle in 1976-78 for sexual deviancy treatment. It's the first lawsuit against the Seattle archdiocese over abuse by a priest to go to trial. Lawyers for the archdiocese say more than 200 claims involving a number of priests have been settled and fewer than 20 pend. The most recent settlement was announced Monday, covering a second plaintiff in this lawsuit. The remaining plaintiff said he never told anyone of the abuse until he was an adult. "I thought I was the only one that was being abused," he said, crying. "I didn't know there were others." O'Donnell wound up leaving the priesthood, worked as a psychologist in suburban Bellevue and later moved to La Conner, north of Seattle. He testified last week he abused at least 30 boys, including the remaining plaintiff in the lawsuit. At issue is whether former Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen, who testified Monday, and other archdiocesan officials knew or should have known that O'Donnell molested boys repeatedly before he was abruptly sent to Seattle from Spokane, and whether he was monitored sufficiently before he returned to Spokane. Hunthausen and other church leaders in Seattle have testified they were never told by their counterparts in Spokane that O'Donnell was a child abuser. They said they thought the priest was in Seattle to attend the University of Washington, which he did, earning a Ph.D. in education. The plaintiff told the jury he was an eighth grader in an observant Catholic family at St. Paul Parish in a working-class area of south Seattle when O'Donnell befriended him, then began sexually touching him on boat trips and assaulted him repeatedly on overnight outings. Two of the episodes occurred after O'Donnell returned to Spokane and invited the plaintiff and another boy to visit for an outing at a lakeside cabin, an invitation the man testified that his mother enthusiastically supported. O'Donnell molested him at the cabin, the man testified. "It hurt. I don't know how long it (continued), but I just wanted it to stop," he said. "He told me everything would be OK, and that it was just between him and me, and nobody else needed to know."
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