PENNSYLVANIA
The Morning Call
Peter Smith
Of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The Diocese of Pittsburgh last year reached a “five-figure” settlement with a man over his claim that he was sexually abused as a youth in the 1980s by a priest whom then-Bishop Anthony Bevilacqua brought into the diocese despite knowing his past sexual predatory behavior and risk of repeating it.
The out-of-court settlement, reached in October, was announced this week by Boston lawyer Mitchell Garabedian, who said his client was assaulted by the Rev. John P. Connor, a New Jersey priest who worked in the North Hills section of Pittsburgh in the 1980s.
Allegations of Connor’s serial attacks on youths before and after his Pittsburgh tenure were documented in a 2005 grand jury report on the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, where the late Cardinal Bevilacqua later brought Connor.
But this settlement provides the first allegation that Connor also used his time in the Diocese of Pittsburgh to groom and sexually assault at least one youth.
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