CONNECTICUT
The Hartford Courant
By EDMUND H. MAHONY, emahony@courant.com
The Hartford Courant
8:33 p.m. EST, January 24, 2012
WATERBURY—
The first trial of a sexual abuse complaint against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Hartford opened in Superior Court Tuesday amid allegations that high church officials, including a former archbishop, shifted an offending priest between parishes after learning of complaints that he had abused boys.
Evidence presented to the jury Tuesday also indicated that archdiocese administrators, including the late Archbishop John Francis Whealon, moved the priest, Ivan Ferguson, between church schools where he had access to children.
The suit contends that Ferguson was a pedophile who molested and sexually assaulted boys in the 1970s and 1980s. The archdiocese, which employed Ferguson, knew of the abuse but failed to stop it, the suit contends.
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