GUAM
Pacific News Center
Written by Donna De Jesus
Retired Saipan Bishop Tomas Camacho wants the charges against him to be dismissed because nearly 50 years have passed since the alleged incident.
Guam – After being accused of raping a Guam altar boy in the early 1970s, the now-retired Saipan bishop, Tomas Camacho, of the Diocese of Chalan Kanoa, has moved to dismiss the complaint.
55-year-old Melvin Duenas accused Camacho of locking him in a room when he was 10 years old, and sexually assaulting him almost nightly at the rectory of the St. Joseph Catholic Church in Inarajan when he was an altar server.
Camacho’s attorney, William Fitzgerald, filed in court documents that the claims made by Duenas are time-barred and were not revived by the passage of Guam Public Law 33-187 in 2016.
Atty. Fitzgerald remarks “by retroactively changing the statute of limitations involving sexual abuse in Guam, the Guam Legislature unconstitutionally impaired vested rights, opened the door to unverifiable and potentially undefendable claims.”
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.