NEW MEXICO
ABQ Journal
By Olivier Uyttebrouck / Journal Staff Writer
PUBLISHED: Sunday, May 10, 2015
Archbishop-elect of Santa Fe John C. Wester said he remains in contact with victims of clerical sexual abuse in San Francisco and considers some to be friends.
It is unlikely that Joseph Piscitelli counts himself among them.
In 2006, a California jury awarded Piscitelli, 59, a $600,000 civil award for sexual abuse he experienced as a teenager at the hands of a priest who served as a teacher and vice principal at a Catholic high school in Richmond, Calif.
The priest, the Rev. Stephen Whelan, later worked at a church with an attached grammar school owned by the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
Piscitelli said that, in 2003, shortly after he filed a lawsuit alleging the abuse, he met with Wester, then-auxiliary bishop of San Francisco, and urged the archdiocese to remove Whelan from duties at Saints Peter and Paul Church in San Francisco.
“Here’s a guy that I know is a rapist, that I’m suing for sexual molestation, who is working with kids at a Catholic Church in San Francisco,” Piscitelli said of Whelan.
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