WASHINGTON
Kirkland Reporter
by TJ MARTINELL, Kirkland Reporter
Three former priests, who worked at several different Kirkland churches, were named last week by the Archdiocese of Seattle in a list of clergy and religious leaders who the church believes were involved in sexual abuse of a minor in Western Washington.
However, not among the names of accused was former youth minister Jim Funnell at St. John Vianney Church who was alleged to have molested a child in the mid-1980s for more than a year. A lawsuit was filed and scheduled before the parish district settled out of court for $635,000 in 2012.
The three priests named in the Archdiocese release who served in Kirkland at some point included Harold Quigg and Stephen Trippy, both of whom are deceased. The third priest is Gerald Moffat, who is listed as being in “permanent prayer and penance,” a status which applies to a priest permanently removed from all public ministry.
In 2003, a 43-year-old man committed suicide in the parking lot of the Kirkland church where Moffat served in the 1970s after the man filed an anonymous lawsuits against Moffat, alleging sexual abuse. Five other men had also filed similar lawsuits against two other local priests in the Seattle Catholic Archdiocese at the same time.
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