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	Diocese Priest Abuse Case to Get under Way This Week By Sam Hemingway Burlington Free Press [Vermont] April 17, 2006 http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article? AID=/20060417/NEWS01/60417002/1009&theme= The trial in the first of 12 cases involving a former Catholic priest accused of molesting altar boys at Christ the King Church in Burlington in the 1970s is scheduled to get under way this week in Burlington. The case brought by Michael Gay of South Burlington against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington alleges the former priest, Ed Paquette of Westfield, Mass., "sexually abused and sexually exploited" him as a child and claims the diocese knew Paquette was a child molester when it hired him. Judge Ben Joseph last week agreed to sever the case against Paquette, elderly and claiming to be in ill health, from the case against the diocese at the request of Gay's lawyer, Jerome O'Neill. Paquette's case will be tried separately at a later date, court officials said. According to court documents, Gay has claimed he put the alleged abuse out of his mind as a child and did not recall it until he was coping with the trauma of a 2002 vehicle accident. He has agreed to permit publication of his name in The Burlington Free Press, which does not disclose the names of alleged victims of sexual abuse without their consent. Jury drawing for the trial, which is expected to last three weeks, will be conducted today; opening arguments are scheduled for Wednesday. Court officials said a jury will be selected from a potential pool of 180 people. The trial will focus on what the diocese knew about Paquette prior to his arrival in Burlington. According to court documents, the jury will hear evidence that the diocese was told Paquette molested boys at five parishes in Massachusetts and Indiana before coming to Vermont. Once here, he allegedly continued to molest boys at three more parishes. "The plaintiff has presented evidence that the (diocese) knew that Father Paquette molested boys in both Rutland and Montpelier before he was reassigned to Burlington," Joseph, the presiding judge, wrote in an April 3 pre-trial order. Joseph has issued a strict gag order preventing parties in the case from speaking outside the court about the matter. In an interview before the gag order was in place, diocesan lawyer William O'Brien asserted the church acted promptly to confront Paquette's behavior in 1978. "The bishop took aggressive action and imposed the ultimate sanction you can impose on a priest, which was to ban him from the priesthood," O'Brien said in 2004. Then-Bishop John Marshall did not formally defrock Paquette however, O'Brien said. The diocese is also likely to argue the church should not be liable for Paquette's alleged behavior in the 1970s, a time when it was more commonly assumed such sexually deviant behavior was curable. "We don't think you can use a standard of care beyond the science of the day," Rutland attorney David Cleary, the lead diocesan attorney, said during a pre-trial court hearing earlier this month. "That would assume the church had a greater knowledge of the subject than the psychologists working on the problem had." Gay is seeking unspecified damages in the civil case. The diocese has spent more than $400,000 since 2002 in out-of-court settlements of child sex abuse claims made against other diocesan priests. In the late 1990s, it paid out more than $2 million in compensation, counseling and legal fees to resolve abuse claims brought by former residents of the now-closed St. Joseph's Orphanage in Burlington. In addition to the 12 cases alleging child sex abuse by Paquette, five other lawsuits against the diocese and the individual priests are pending in the Burlington court, filed by other victims who allege four other priests abused them. Contact Sam Hemingway at 660-1850 or e-mail at shemingway@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com
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