UNITED STATES
BishopAccountability.org
Summary of Case: James Nickel was a priest of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary ordained in 1970. His career took him from the Los Angeles CA archdiocese to the Winona MN and Fall River MA dioceses, the Diocese of Nassau in the Bahamas, and back to Fall River MA. He went on to become involved with Damien Ministries, an HIV/AIDS organization in Washington DC, working as its Executive Director from 2004 until his death in January 2008. Nickel’s name was included on a list released by Boston attorney Mitchell Garabedian on April 11, 2012 of clerics accused in cases that he had settled in the previous year; a plaintiff alleging abuse by Nickel in Fall River received “six figures.” In December 2014 two more lawsuits were filed, with accusations that Nickel had sexually abused two boys – one in a West Harwich MA parish in the 1970s, and the other while Nickel was pastor of a Fairhaven MA parish in the 1980s.
Ordained: 1970
Died: January 20, 2008
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