NORTH CAROLINA
Charlotte Observer
By Michael Gordon
mgordon@charlotteobserver.com
Posted: Friday, Jun. 20, 2014
A Mecklenburg County judge has thrown out two lawsuits against the Catholic Diocese of Charlotte stemming from decades-old abuse cases against two priests.
Superior Court Judge Robert Bell issued his ruling Friday. Attorneys for the diocese had argued last month that the four plaintiffs missed the state’s deadline for filing such complaints.
Charlotte attorney Sam McGee, who represents one of the plaintiffs, said Friday that an appeal of Bell’s decision is likely.
“Something awful happened here,” he said. “Even if it takes a long time for the victim to process, which is the typical pattern in this kind of trauma, what this ruling says is, ‘Well, there is not a legal way to address that wrong.’ ”
The alleged abuse by the Revs. Joseph Kelleher and Richard Farwell occurred in the 1970s and 1980s in Charlotte, Albemarle and Salisbury. The lawsuits against the diocese were filed in 2011 and 2012.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.