MAINE
Bangor Daily News
By Judy Harrison, BDN Staff
Posted June 03, 2013
PORTLAND, Maine — Two brothers who were altar servers at a South Berwick parish in the late mid- to late 1970s have sued the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland claiming the bishop at the time knew the priest who sexually abused them was a danger to children but did not remove him from ministry.
Mitchell Garabedian, a Boston attorney known for representing victims of clergy sexual abuse, filed separate lawsuits May 15 in Cumberland County Superior in Portland on behalf of Frederick Sean Conroy, 46, of Essex County, Mass, and Jeffrey Patrick Conroy, 45, of Bexar County, Texas. The men claim that they were sexually assaulted between 1976 and 1979 by the Rev. James Vallely, now deceased, when he was pastor at St. Michael Catholic Church.
The lawsuits name the bishop of the diocese as the defendant. Maine Catholics currently are waiting for Pope Francis to appoint a new bishop. The former leader of the diocese, Bishop Richard J. Malone, 67, now head of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo, N.Y., left in July after eight years in Maine. Answers to the complaints have not yet been filed. Gerald F. Petruccelli, the Portland attorney who represents the diocese, declined to comment on the lawsuits Monday. Efforts to reach Garabedian last week and on Monday were unsuccessful.
The diocese previously acknowledged that there were credible abuse allegations against Vallely. In 2005, the diocese said that Vallely would have been fired if he had lived. The priest died in 1997 in Florida.
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