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  Jury Hears Testimony to Decide Damages in Priest Molestation Case

By Terence Chea
The Associated Press, carried in Dateline Alabama [California]
March 21, 2005

A 47-year-old California man who sued the Archdiocese of San Francisco for sexual abuse more than 30 years ago testified Monday that he felt "guilty, ashamed and disappointed in myself" after being molested numerous times by a San Jose priest he once admired.

As the second phase of the landmark civil trial got underway, Dennis Kavanaugh said that the Rev. Joseph Pritchard fondled him between 20 and 30 times in the early 1970s at several locations, including a golf course, the priest's rectory bedroom and a car. He also testified that he felt intense guilt for not revealing the abuse until 2002, which may have allowed Pritchard to abuse other children, including Kavanaugh's younger brother.

"I felt guilty about the fact that if I had said something, maybe a lot of people would have been spared what he did to them," Kavanaugh said in San Francisco County Superior Court. "I felt guilty. I felt ashamed. I felt afraid."

Kavanaugh is one of 22 former grade-school students who said they were repeatedly molested by Pritchard, who died in 1988 before the allegations against him surfaced. A jury hearing Kavanaugh's lawsuit against the archdiocese decided Friday that church officials knew or should have known Pritchard was abusing young boys while he was a pastor at St. Martin of Tours in San Jose.

Kavanaugh's civil lawsuit was the first of more than 750 against Roman Catholic dioceses in California to go to trial since the state temporarily lifted the statute of limitations for filing sex-abuse claims in 2002. The new law gave victims, whose allegations had previously been considered too old, one year to file molestation claims.

More than 150 lawsuits have been filed in Northern California, including about 75 naming the San Francisco Archdiocese.

Damage awards in Kavanaugh's case, along with another case headed to trial against the Oakland diocese, could influence eventual settlements statewide.

In his opening statement for the damages phase of the trial, Kavanaugh's attorney, Larry Drivon, said testimony from seven scheduled witnesses would show that the sexual abuse has led to a lifetime of emotional, professional and marital troubles for his client.

Drivon linked the molestation by Pritchard to Kavanaugh's dropping out of college, divorcing his wife, serving prison time for assault and feeling guilty and ashamed. Kavanaugh now lives in the San Jose suburbs and makes a living spraying herbicide for a landscape company.

"Had it not been for that molestation, Dennis Kavanaugh's life would be different, would be better," Drivon told jurors. "There hasn't been a day in the last 32 years that this has not haunted him."

But church attorneys said they would prove that problems in Kavanaugh's life could be attributed to other factors. They said it was clear that Kavanaugh suffered from the abuse, but questioned the source of his problems.

"Was this harm caused by Father Pritchard, or perhaps other events in his life that have nothing to do with Father Pritchard?" attorney Jim Goodman asked jurors.

Martha Kavanaugh testified Monday that her son was an excellent student and a talented athlete who had many friends before he was molested by Pritchard as a teenager. After he was abused, he stopped applying himself in school and in sports, and lost his faith in the Roman Catholic Church.

"He would say, 'There is no God. I don't believe in God,'" she said. "He'd been robbed of his faith, and he had no heart left."

Kavanaugh's younger brother, Thomas, 41, testified that he was sexually abused by Pritchard for about three years starting in 1974. He said he did not learn his older brother had been molested until 2002, after Dennis Kavanaugh was released from a year in prison for threatening his wife with a gun.

Dennis Kavanaugh testified that he had problems with sexual intimacy with his wife, drank alcohol and smoked marijuana regularly for many years and raised his two sons and daughter without religion. While in prison, he said his faith in God was restored.

"I started praying. I started talking to God," he said.

Upon questioning from defense attorneys, Kavanaugh said he didn't believe his divorce or his problems with drinking and drugs was related to the molestation. He also said he has never taken psychiatric medication, and never mentioned the abuse to his therapist.