WESTON (VT)
VTDigger [Montpelier VT]
April 20, 2021
By Kevin O’Connor
A former Vermont resident has filed a civil lawsuit in Windsor County Superior Court, alleging the Weston Priory and the Jesuits religious order were negligent in allowing him to be sexually abused as a teenager in about 1970.
Michael Veitch, 66, of New York said he was 15 when priest James Talbot molested him during a visit to the priory, according to claims first reported in 2018.
Talbot, convicted three years ago of sexually abusing a boy in Maine, recently was released from prison. The registered sex offender, now in his 80s, was jailed earlier on another conviction and has settled lawsuits with more than a dozen other plaintiffs, according to media reports.
Veitch attorney Jessica Arbour, noting Vermont’s recent elimination of its statute of limitations on such allegations, said her client “is grateful for the chance to call those who wronged him to account now.”