By Scott Shifrel
New York Daily News
March 29, 2011
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2011/03/29/2011-03-29_defrocked_bronx_priest_charles_kavanagh_suing_sexual_abuse_accuser_for_defamatio.html
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| Charles Kavanagh was dismissed from the clergy after a former seminary student said the Bronx priest sexually abused him. |
A once-prominent Bronx priest who was defrocked after a church tribunal found him guilty of sexually abusing a teen is suing his accuser for defamation.
Charles Kavanagh, who was once in charge of the archdiocese's fund-raising arm, claimed in a federal suit filed Tuesday that he's innocent.
Kavanagh, 73, was dismissed from the clergy after former seminary student Daniel Donohue said the priest took him to a Right to Life rally in Washington and molested him in a motel room.
"When he made this accusation in writing, Donohue knew it was false and he made it with malice," Kavanagh says in the lawsuit.
"Any reasonable person would consider a false accusation of such conduct against a holy priest to be outrageous and highly offensive."
Donohue, now 46, received a settlement from the New York Archidiocese, the lawsuit says.
The priest's filing includes an affidavit from the former dean of Cathedral Preparatory Seminary, saying students weren't allowed to go to the Right to Life rallies.
It also includes affidavits from two former students saying they were never taken to the rallies and didn't know anyone who was.
And it notes minor inconsistencies in Donohue's story, such as the time of day that the 1973 abuse allegedly happened.
Kavanagh has been fighting the allegation since Donohue lodged it in 2002 - with church rallies, letter writing campaigns and repeated appeals to church courts.
The lawsuit does not name the church nor the newspapers that quoted Donohue and asks only for a jury trial.
Donohue could not be reached for comment but his wife told the Daily News they thought the incident was finally behind them.
"Holy Jesus, Mary and Joseph," D.C. Donohue said of the court filing. "It's so outrageous. What a crazy fellow."
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