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	Man Abused by Coventry Priest Launches Appeal to Get Payout By Emma Stone Coventry Telegraph February 17, 2010 http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/2010/02/17/man-abused-by-coventry-priest-launches-appeal-to-get-payout-92746-25846942/ A MAN sexually abused by a Coventry priest has launched an appeal after being told he would not be compensated because he isn’t Catholic. The victim, who is now 45, was 12 when he was first abused by Father Christopher Clonan in Coventry during the mid-1970s. Fr Clonan, then in his 30s and assistant parish priest at Christ the King Church in Westhill Road, Coundon, groomed the youngster by paying him pocket money to wash his car, clean the presbytery and iron his clothes. He is seeking about ?250,000 in damages from the Trustees of the Birmingham Archdiocese, claiming they were “vicariously liable” for the abuse he suffered. The force Fr Clonan used on the youngster in 1975 or 1976 left marks and although his mother spotted the bruises when he was in the bath, she did not believe him when he told her that the priest had been “feeling him up”, the court heard last year. The judge also accepted that Fr Clonan’s superior, the late Fr Michael McTernan, had been informed in 1974 by distressed parents that Fr Clonan had abused another boy, but no action was taken. Fr Clonan, who was based at the Coundon church for 20 years, fled the country in 1992 and died in Australia six years later of a brain haemorrhage. In 2005, the diocese paid out ?700,000 compensation to a former altar boy who had been abused by Fr Clonan. The previous year, it paid ?330,000 to Simon Grey who had also suffered at the hands of the city priest. Several other victims have won smaller amounts in damages from the diocese.
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