SAN FRANCISCO
SFGate
By Kristen V. Brown Saturday, April 25, 2015
In the latest scandal to hit San Francisco’s Catholic Church, elementary school parents at Star of the Sea School have renewed calls for the ouster of the parish’s controversial pastor after learning of a decade-old civil court case in which a jury found he inflicted emotional distress on an 11-year-old girl at his former parish in Modesto.
The lawsuit in San Joaquin County Superior Court in 2005 said that when the girl came to the Rev. Joseph Illo in September 2001 to report alleged sexual abuse by another priest, the Rev. Francis Arakal, Illo called her a liar, yelled at her and forced her to confront Arakal.
No criminal charges were filed against Arakal. The jury in the civil lawsuit did not find him liable for any wrongful touching, but awarded the family $20,000 for emotional distress based on how the incident was handled.
“Whether the story was real or not, he had no right to treat a child the way he did as a responsible adult in a position of authority,” said Christy Brooks, a parent of two students at Star of the Sea, a K-8 school. “We really need an explanation from the archdiocese of how this person was vetted and put into a parish that had an elementary school. He is ill-equipped to be sitting anywhere near children.”
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