NEW JERSEY
The Record
[Bishop Myers deposition via BishopAccountability.org]
TUESDAY AUGUST 13, 2013
BY JEFF GREEN
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD
The parents of a man who alleges that he was sexually abused by a priest after John J. Myers, now archbishop of Newark, allowed the cleric to continue working in an Illinois diocese years ago talked about their son’s hardships outside the Basilica Cathedral of the Sacred Heart Tuesday afternoon.
Joanne and David Ward, who now live in Michigan, said during a press conference announcing a $1.35 million settlement of their son Andrew’s lawsuit against Myers and the Diocese of Peoria that he is still feeling the effects of the abuse.
“The church has taken my faith; it has destroyed my family,” Joanne Ward said.
Myers said he did not know about a sexual abuse complaint against a priest in his former diocese in Illinois in a 2010 deposition related to the case, which was released Tuesday. In correspondence that was among documents released on Tuesday, Myers downplayed a parishioner’s report of suspicious activity involving the same priest, who during the 1990s showered him with gifts of silver, gold coins and cash during his decade-long tenure there.
Andrew Ward, now 25, alleged in the suit that he was abused when he was 8 years old by Monsignor Thomas W. Maloney, who died in 2009. He did not attend Tuesday’s press conference. According to a letter in the diocese’s file on Maloney, a year before the alleged abuse began, a woman reported to the Diocese of Peoria that she also was molested by the cleric as a youth.
Jeff Anderson, Ward’s attorney, said during the press conference that Myers was not telling the truth when he said he did not know about the initial complaint. Those kinds of complaints, he said, “always go to the top.”
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