BishopAccountability.org
	Victims Testify about Abuser Priest in State's Second Civil Suit By Justin M. Norton Associated Press, carried in San Luis Obispo Tribune [Hayward CA] April 5, 2005 HAYWARD, Calif. - A former altar boy on Tuesday recalled how a Catholic priest summoned him to his rectory on the premise of doing gardening work, but instead ordered him to his bedroom and molested him. Tom Thatcher, now a 33-year-old maintenance worker from Lakewood, Fla., said the Rev. Robert Ponciroli pulled him close, told him to lift his shirt and then started tickling him. Before long, Thatcher, then about 9, was rolling around with the priest in bed, listening to him grunt and laugh, Thatcher testified during a civil trial stemming from his lawsuit against the Oakland Diocese. "I felt like a little rag doll flopping around with him on the bed," Thatcher said, gasping and holding back tears as he recalled the incident from the early 1980s. "I remember thinking I didn't know why we were doing this. ... I honestly did not know what to do." Thatcher and his brother, Bob, filed a civil lawsuit against the diocese, alleging its leaders were negligent in their supervision of Ponciroli, who is now 68 and has been removed from public ministry. They say they were abused when they were altar boys at St. Ignatius Catholic Church in Antioch. The case is important because it is among the first of more than 750 civil lawsuits against Roman Catholic dioceses in California to go to trial since the state in 2002 temporarily lifted the statute of limitations for filing sex-abuse claims. Attorneys associated with the lawsuits say damage awards from the early trials could set a benchmark that can be used for a potential settlement of roughly 160 cases filed against Northern California dioceses, the so-called Clergy III cases. On the witness stand, Thatcher said after the incident he left the bedroom, went downstairs and waited while his older brother was ordered to come up to the room. Tom Thatcher said he never mentioned the incident because of his family's strong religious beliefs. "The priest in our family was a direct representative of God. He was as close to God as you could possibly get," he said. Ponciroli initially seemed like a "cool, normal person," but later began to act angry and authoritarian. Thatcher said he remembered other tickling incidents, but added they felt playful and unthreatening at first. Bob Thatcher, 34, who now lives in Arizona, testified about at least three incidents of abuse, including one while driving with Ponciroli, who loosened the boy's belt and pants and touched his genitals. "No one had ever touched me there before," Bob Thatcher said. "I didn't know what it meant, but I knew it was really wrong. It sent a shock wave through me." The Rev. Thomas Doyle, a priest, lawyer and victims' advocate for more than 20 years, testified that a 1962 Vatican directive requires suspension or defrocking of priests for certain sexual offenses. Doyle said it was "obligatory" for the Oakland Diocese to investigate 1975 allegations that Ponciroli acted suspiciously around altar boys, but it was never done. A church lawyer chose not to cross-examine Doyle. Earlier Tuesday, the jury heard a succession of other witnesses, including two men who say they also were abused by Ponciroli. On Monday, former top diocesan officials testified that they hadn't realized the extent of the priest's sexual abuse and acknowledged they had reassigned him to a new church without determining whether he had victimized other children. The Thatcher brothers' case is the second abuse lawsuit against the church to go to trial and the first that seeks punitive damages that could substantially raise the amount of money cash-strapped dioceses must pay to victims. Negotiations are continuing for settlements in the other sexual abuse lawsuits filed in Northern California. Those lawsuits target the dioceses of San Francisco, Sacramento, Stockton, Fresno, Santa Rosa, Monterey, San Jose and Oakland. The first case to be tried ended last month when a San Francisco jury awarded $437,000 to 47-year-old Dennis Kavanaugh. The former altar boy sued the Archdiocese of San Francisco claiming he was repeatedly abused by the Rev. Joseph Pritchard, a San Jose pastor in the early 1970s. Opening statements began Tuesday in the second San Francisco case against Pritchard.
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