YORK (PA)
York Daily Record
August 17, 2018
By Brandie Kessler
The name of one accused priest from the Harrisburg diocese that was listed in the grand jury report released Tuesday was left off the list of names provided by the Harrisburg diocese earlier this month.
Matt Haverstick, the Harrisburg diocese’s attorney, said that the omission of James McLucas was not a mistake.
“This is not shenanigans by the diocese,” Haverstick said. “I don’t care what the grand jury report says.”
Haverstick said McLucas was not among the 72 names provided by the diocese because he did not sexually abuse a child.
“The report is not entirely accurate,” Haverstick said of the nearly 900-page grand jury presentment in which 301 priests are accused of sexually abusing children since the 1940s.
The grand jury report says McLucas was a priest in the Archdiocese of New York living in Elysburg, Pennsylvania, as the chaplain to a monastery in 2014. Elysburg is within the Diocese of Harrisburg’s territory.
“The head Mother of the Monastery called the Diocese of Harrisburg after finding out McLucas had sexually abused a 14 year old girl and continued a relationship with her into her adulthood,” the grand jury report says. “This was reported to the Archdiocese of New York in 2012.”
But Haverstick said a lawsuit filed by the woman who said McLucas abused her mentions nothing of McLucas abusing her when she was a child.
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More: List: Names, details of 301 Pa. priest sex abuse allegations in Catholic dioceses
The woman filed the lawsuit in New York in July 2012 when she was 26 years old,
The lawsuit indicates that beginning in July 2007 and continuing through December 2009, the woman was “sexually abused, attacked and harassed,” by McLucas.
At the time the sexual relations began, the woman was 20 years old, and McLucas was working for the Archdiocese of New York.
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