MASSACHUSETTS
Daily Hampshire Gazette
Editorial
Tuesday, April 05, 2016
The Springfield Diocese took the unusual step last week of adding the name of a dead priest to a shameful list: Catholic clergy against whom “credible” allegations of child sexual abuse have been made.
The step came with word that the diocese just settled — for an undisclosed sum — a civil lawsuit brought in 2013 by a Chesterfield man. The suit alleged that this same priest, the late Rev. Paul Archambault, sexually abused the plaintiff for nearly four years, starting around 2006 when the victim was 13. The abuse occurred nearly 50 times in various locations, the man and his attorney claimed, from a Northampton home to a Chicopee parish to a Catholic shrine in Vermont. Confronted later, in 2011, the priest shot himself in the head at age 42 inside a closet at the Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Parish rectory.
All are sorrowful facts — for the Archambault family and all who loved this troubled man and for those he apparently subjected to inappropriate physical and sexual contact.
That’s about as much as most people can bear to hear. This settlement can seem like old news. It comes years after a landslide of legal actions against the Catholic Church. But protecting vulnerable people from sexual abuse demands rigor and attention. And that’s why we think this tragic case deserves closer consideration, in a spirit of moving this issue toward understanding and reconciliation.
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