Suit Seeks Diocese's Sex Abuse Records
By Brendan J. Lyons
The Albany Roman Catholic diocese's handling of sexual abuse complaints against priests has the potential to be laid bare in a Vermont federal court where a Glens Falls man has filed an unprecedented lawsuit against the priest who was convicted of taking him across state lines to rape him when he was a young altar boy. The federal lawsuit is filed against both the diocese and a former pastor, Gary Mercure, in U.S. District Court in Burlington. It was filed there, in part, because Vermont's statute of limitations, unlike New York's, allows child abuse victims to sue for damages within six years after they discover any emotional or physical problems attributable to abuse. "This lawsuit is at an early stage and motions are pending. The claims against the Albany diocese have no factual or legal basis. We intend to vigorously contest them," Ken Goldfarb, spokesman for the Albany diocese, said Friday. The victim suing the diocese, now 36, testified last year at Mercure's criminal trial that the priest raped him several times at the rectory of a Queensbury church, Our Lady of Anunciation. He also accused Mercure of raping him in a car on a ski trip and during a swimming trip to Lake Saint Catherine in Poultney, Vt., in the late 1980s. The identity of the alleged victim, who could not be reached for comment, is being withheld by the Times Union, which refrains from identifying sexual assault victims without their consent. His attorney, Jerome F. O'Neill of Burlington, said the Albany diocese is trying to prevent the disclosure of church records on its handling of clergy abuse generally. "They will use every legal tactic, anything they can do, to prevent us from getting that information," O'Neill said. He said the diocese's attorneys are challenging the release of documents that may establish a business relationship between the Burlington and Albany dioceses. That issue is key in establishing jurisdiction for the case in Vermont. The Albany diocese has argued in court papers that it has no legal ties to the Burlington diocese and cannot be sued there for the actions of a priest who worked for them but crossed state lines — leaving the diocese's jurisdictional boundaries — to allegedly rape his victim. O'Neill has countered in court papers that records provided by church leaders in Burlington call into question the Albany diocese's assertion, made in a sworn affidavit, that there are no ties between the two dioceses. O'Neill said priests regularly crossed the state border to serve in parishes for both dioceses. If the diocese prevails in having the case transferred to a federal court in Albany, the New York statute of limitations would likely scuttle the lawsuit. The Albany diocese has never released internal records documenting its handling of clergy abuse allegations or decisions by Bishop Howard J. Hubbard to reassign or seek treatment for priests accused of sexually abusing children. "If in fact they knew what was going on with Mercure ... until we get the documents we aren't going to know that," O'Neill said. "If there's nothing in those files that shows the priests were doing bad things, and the diocese knew about it, then the diocese has nothing to fear." Mercure was sentenced last year to more than 20 years in a Massachusetts state prison for forcibly raping at least three altar boys, including the Glens Falls man now suing him. Mercure was a pastor at parishes in Glens Falls and Queensbury, Warren County, when the abuse took place in the 1980s and 1990s. O'Neill has asked a federal judge to order the diocese to turn over up to 40 years worth of records on its handling of sexual abuse cases. The diocese has filed motions to dismiss the lawsuit on jurisdictional grounds or to limit the claim in Vermont only to Mercure. The diocese's attorneys also have sought a protective order, which O'Neill opposes, that would bar disclosure of any church records that may be turned over. At Mercure's trial in Berkshire County last year, the Glens Falls man testified that he was 8 years old when he met Mercure and became an altar boy. His mother, he said, was working at the Queensbury church helping teach religious classes to children. "He was a manipulative man. I was a young boy ... a shy kid," he told the jury at Mercure's trial on Feb. 4, 2011. He testified that about a year or two after he met Mercure, the priest raped him in the rectory of the Queensbury church, where Mercure lived. There were as many as 10 other incidents, he said, including in the back seat of Mercure's car when he drove the boy, alone, to go skiing at Brodie Mountain in western Massachusetts. He added that Mercure blamed him for the abuse, and told him that his parents would divorce if the boy told anyone. He said that during the trip to Lake Saint Catherine he bled from being raped by Mercure and that the priest instructed him to tell his parents he had been injured swimming. The diocese's handling of sexual abuse allegations came under intense law enforcement scrutiny in 2008 when allegations against Mercure were investigated by Warren County District Attorney Katherine B. Hogan. She turned the case over to Massachusetts prosecutors after determining that her office was time-barred from prosecuting Mercure in New York. According to relatives of two of Mercure's alleged victims in Glens Falls, the diocese sent Mercure to a church-run hospital near Philadelphia, St. John Vianney, in the mid-1990s for undisclosed counseling and what church officials described to parishioners as a "nervous breakdown." Mercure was later returned to ministry. The mother of two former altar boys in Glens Falls — both of whom have alleged sexual encounters with Mercure — said that one of her sons told her Mercure tried to kiss him on the family's front porch. Their mother said she reported the incident to church officials in 2000. Five years earlier, the woman said, she and her husband had no knowledge of their sons' encounters with Mercure when they drove to Pennsylvania around 1995 and helped Mercure move his belongings back to New York after he was discharged from St. John Vianney. "One night, the phone rang," said the woman, who now lives in another state. "He called us to tell us he was coming home and would we come down to get all his books and things and bring them back. We did, having no idea he was a monster." Mercure is appealing his conviction and has used private attorneys in both the criminal case and to defend himself in the Vermont lawsuit. Attorneys for Mercure and the diocese declined comment. Goldfarb, the diocese's spokesman, said the diocese has not paid any portion of Mercure's legal fees. "Mercure requested a loan from a clergy fund that is supported by voluntary contributions from priests, and made available to priests as a peer-directed fund," he said in a recent email. Goldfarb defended the diocese' handling of Mercure's case. "Bishop Hubbard permanently removed Gary Mercure from ministry in 2008 and publicly announced the removal at that time, three years before his conviction in Berkshire County Court," he said. "It was the Albany diocese that publicly denounced Mercure's depraved and reprehensible conduct and it was Bishop Hubbard who announced he would seek Mercure's laicization." Albany Bishop Howard J. Hubbard has visited Mercure in state prison, according to a person familiar with the matter but not authorized to comment publicly. "While, as a matter of policy, the diocese does not comment on specific private meetings, I'm sure you are aware that bishops have a pastoral responsibility to provide spiritual care for people in prison," Goldfarb said.
|
.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.