GUAM
Pacific Daily News
Haidee V Eugenio , heugenio@guampdn.com April 6, 2017
A man who was an altar boy with Archbishop Anthony S. Apuron in Mongmong in the late 1950s became the 46th person to file a Guam clergy sex abuse lawsuit.
A man identified in court documents only by his initials, “D.C.,” to protect his privacy, alleged in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that the late Father Antonio Cruz sexually abused him in 1957 or 1958, when he and Apuron were the only two altar boys at Nuestra Senora De Las Aguas in Mongmong. D.C. was only 13 or 14 years old at the time.
While D.C. quit being an altar boy after Cruz allegedly sexually abused him, Apuron went on to become an ordained priest and Guam’s archbishop for nearly 31 years.
Apuron, who’s identified Cruz as his mentor, is undergoing a Vatican canonical penal trial and is facing civil lawsuits allegedly for raping or sexually abusing four altar boys in the 1970s when he was a parish priest in Agat.
D.C., represented attorney Anthony C. Perez, filed the case in the Superior Court of Guam against the Archdiocese of Agana and up to 20 others who may have helped conceal or cover up the sexual abuse. Cruz, who died in 1986 at the age of 62, is one of eight Guam clergy who were named in the 46 lawsuits filed so far in local and federal court.
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