MASSACHUSETTS
Eagle-Tribune
By Jill Harmacinski jharmacinski@eagletribune.com
HAVERHILL — The Rev. Arnold Kelley is accused of sexually abusing a boy at a Boston area church in the 1970s — but not at All Saints Parish in Haverhill, where he mostly recently lived before retiring and going into a nursing home.
This made All Saints parishioner Kathleen Parker question why a recent civil sex abuse lawsuit against Kelley was being discussed with the media late Wednesday morning on a public sidewalk outside her church at 120 Bellevue Ave.
“I find it quite offensive,” said Parker, who asked Robert Hoatson, the leader of a sexual abuse recovery organization, why he felt it necessary “to defame our happy home.”
Parker said her family has also been touched by the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal, but for “the better part of 20 years we have found a home” and “healing” at All Saints, she said.
“Father Kelley doesn’t live here,” said Parker, adding the priest in now in his 80s, retired and lives at Mary Immaculate nursing home in Lawrence where he is in failing health.
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