Appellate Court: South Windsor Church, Episcopal Diocese Not Liable in Sexual Abuse Case

By Ted Glanzer
The Patch
June 30, 2013

http://southwindsor.patch.com/groups/police-and-fire/p/appellate-court-south-windsor-church-episcopal-diocese-not-liable-in-sexual-abuse-case_885dd1fa


Connecticut Appellate Court affirms a lower court's decision that St. Peter's Church of South Windsor and the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut did not owe a duty of care to the plaintiff.

The Connecticut Appellate Court last week affirmed a lower court’s ruling that a South Windsor Church and the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut are not liable for the injuries a man suffered as a result of allegedly being sexually abused by a priest in 1977.

The Appellate Court held that the trial court properly concluded that St. Peter’s Episcopal Church of South Windsor and the the diocese were not liable to Robert Gough, who testified in a deposition that he was sexually abused by Bruce Jacques, a priest employed by the church and the diocese, in the spring of 1977.

Specifically, the courts held that neither the church nor the diocese owed a duty of care to Gough, as it was not foreseeable that Jacques would sexually abuse Gough.

The church and the diocese provided 12 affidavits from Jacques’ wife as well as his longtime friends, clergy members and members of the church, all of whom stated that they never witnessed or heard anything indicating that Jacques had abused or would abuse anyone.

“Thus, without any evidence indicating that it was reasonably foreseeable that Jacques would cause the type of harm that the church's policies sought to prevent, the plaintiff's argument that the church's policies created a duty owed to him by the defendants must fail,” the Appellate Court held.