CALIFORNIA
Lodi News-Sentinel
By Ross Farrow/News-Sentinel Staff Writer
Two parishioners at a Stockton Catholic church testified Wednesday about Father Michael Kelly touching children in 1984. However, both of them said they didn’t consider the acts to be sexual misconduct.
The testimony came from the first two witnesses in the civil trial in San Joaquin County Superior Court. The plaintiff, a man in his late 30s, has sued Kelly and the Stockton Diocese, accusing Kelly of sexually abusing him when the plaintiff was an altar boy at Cathedral of the Annunciation in Stockton in the 1980s.
Kelly hasn’t been arrested or charged with criminal sexual misconduct. The case is being tried before a civil jury.
Kelly has been pastor of St. Joachim’s Catholic Church in Lockeford since 2004 and previously served in Stockton, Sonora, San Andreas and Ceres before being assigned to St. Joachim’s.
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