PENNSYLVANIA
The Morning Call
By Riley Yates
Of The Morning Call
The Diocese of Allentown is fighting a lawsuit that claims it failed to protect a South Korean teenager who was sexually abused at a dormitory for Pius X exchange students, saying the high school shouldn’t be held responsible for what happened inside the privately operated dorm.
The girl was 14 and attending Pius X when she was repeatedly sexually assaulted more than four years ago by a tutor at ACE Academy in Pen Argyl, a family-run facility that housed and mentored Korean students attending the Catholic school in Bangor. Her suit charges that the diocese and the school were negligent in allowing the abuse to occur, and that she disclosed it to a priest during confession, but he failed to report it.
At a hearing Tuesday, the diocese asked Northampton County Judge Michael Koury Jr. to toss the suit, saying that the girl’s lawyer hasn’t established enough of a connection between the school and ACE Academy. The man who abused the girl, Richard Kim, worked for ACE and was not an “agent or employee” of Pius, said David Dye, an attorney for the church.
“There is no allegation that Mr. Kim is associated or connected with the diocese at all,” Dye said. In fact, he said, it is unclear whether the school even knew who Kim was.
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