NEW JERSEY/ILLINOIS
The Star-Ledger
By Mark Mueller/The Star-Ledger
on August 12, 2013
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Peoria will pay $1.35 million to settle a lawsuit that contends Newark Archbishop John J. Myers, Peoria’s former bishop, failed to take action against a sexually abusive priest in the mid-1990s, freeing him to molest again.
The settlement, reached late last week, is to be formally announced at a press conference Tuesday afternoon outside Myers’ office in Newark.
The alleged victim’s attorney, Jeff Anderson, also will release a transcript of Myers’ deposition in the case. The deposition had been under court seal since 2010.
Anderson represents Andrew Ward, who has accused the Rev. Thomas Maloney, now deceased, of molesting him in Illinois in 1995, when Ward was 8.
A year earlier, a woman told the diocese Maloney sexually abused her as a child, but the priest was permitted to remain in ministry, the suit contends. Myers also failed to notify police of the allegation, Anderson said.
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