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	San Jose Man Sues Santa Rosa Diocese over Priest Abuse Claim Associated Press State & Local Wire July 18, 2007 A San Jose man who claims he was sexually abused at a Lake County summer camp during the 1970s has sued the Roman Catholic Diocese of Santa Rosa and a priest previously accused in several similar Bay Area lawsuits. The unidentified plaintiff, 46, said the Rev. Richard Presenti molested him in 1973 or 1974 at a Middletown camp run by the Salesian order. Sonoma County Superior Court Judge Knoel Owen ruled last week that the lawsuit could go forward after a psychologist declared that the claim had merit. Church records show that Presenti, 74, was never a priest under the supervision of the Santa Rosa diocese, said Deirdre Frontczak, a spokeswoman for Bishop Daniel Walsh. "We couldn't find anybody in our diocese that had even heard of him," Frontczak said. Presenti, a member of the Salesians, a Catholic religious order devoted to helping the young, now lives at the group's San Francisco headquarters in a "restricted community" where he is kept away from children, a spokesman for the order said. Over the past decade, the Santa Rosa diocese has spent nearly $20 million settling a series of lawsuits alleging sexual abuse by its priests.
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