New Lawsuit Alleges Sexual Abuse in Fort Worth Catholic Diocese

The Texomas
March 6, 2015

http://www.texomashomepage.com/story/d/story/new-lawsuit-alleges-sexual-abuse-in-fort-worth-cat/37578/JzQ74scYK0iIrCVfLD0dVg

[with video]

[the lawsuit]

A lawsuit filed in Tarrant County alleging long-term and horrendous, sexual abuse of a 7th grader at Notre Dame Middle School in Wichita Falls is seeking an award of more than $1 million from the Fort Worth Catholic Diocese and Bishop.

The suit was filed Tuesday on behalf of the anonymous alleged victim, named as John Doe, 117.

It alleges the sexual assaults began in 1989 and continued into the boy's 9th grade.

Doe's attorney says the assailant, Father John Hugh Sutton, was the school chaplain and the boy's history teacher and confessor.

Sutton died in 2004 after serving in several other states under various aliases, the suit alleges he told the boy the assaults were punishment because the boy copied an assignment from an encyclopedia.

And told the boy he had to do penance in the small chapel inside the school, and at least two and sometimes three times a week would get the boy in the cafeteria and take him there.

During the assaults which the suit says were sometimes committed with items from a black velvet bag, Sutton stuffed a towel in the boy's mouth to muffle his screams.

To keep the boy from telling others, the suit alleges when the boy was in 9th grade, Sutton and and two school officials removed him from class and accused him of selling LSD in school and threatened to have him arrested.

And after that threat, the suit alleges the assaults continued until sutton's transfer in 1992, the same year the two officials left the school.

In 2013, the attorney says Doe began having panic attics and was admitted to a psychiatric facility.

Last March, after the allegations surfaced, the bishop of the Fort Worth Diocese sent a notice to Notre Dame parents about the allegations and said anyone who had been abused could come forward.

Doe's attorney said a notice was also posted saying the allegations had a semblance of truth.

A statement from the diocese to us says, the diocese offered counseling and support to the former student and that bishop michael olson came to Sunday masses at all Wichita Falls Parish Churches to announce the allegations and ask any victims to contact the diocese.

It says the diocese is continuing to investigate the allegations.