PITTSBURGH (PA)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
January 12, 2019
By Andrew Goldstein
In 1976, a priest in the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh took a 13-year-old boy on a trip to Super Bowl X in Miami.
Instead of enjoying a fun trip to watch the Steelers play the Cowboys for the NFL championship, the boy endured what he later described as a “week of hell.”
The priest, the Rev. Thomas M. O’Donnell, forced the boy, Martin Nasiadka, now 56, to share a bed with him and repeatedly sexually assaulted him over several days.
Mr. Nasiadka made those allegations against Father O’Donnell in one of two lawsuits filed Friday by attorney George Kontos in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court.
Both lawsuits name the Pittsburgh diocese, Bishop David Zubik and Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the former Pittsburgh bishop, as defendants, alleging that diocesan officials knew about predator priests and covered for them instead of protecting their victims. State law prohibits people from suing individual priests, the lawsuit says.
A spokesman for Cardinal Wuerl in Washington, D.C., said he could not comment “as we are not aware of the filings.” The Pittsburgh diocese did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Nasiadka met Father O’Donnell in 1975 at Annunciation Catholic School/Church in Perry South when he was 12 years old, according to the lawsuit
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.