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	Priest's Alleged Victim Sues Santa Rosa Diocese By Justin Berton, Demian Bulwa San Francisco Chronicle August 20 2010 http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/08/19/BAAE1F0CJL.DTL&tsp=1 36-year-old Eureka man sued the Santa Rosa Roman Catholic Diocese on Thursday, claiming that he was molested by a priest who was sent from Ireland to work in California in the 1980s despite being the subject of complaints from boys. The man said he decided to sue the diocese after reading news reports last week about Patrick Joseph McCabe, 74, who was forced out of the church in the late 1980s and settled in Alameda. Federal prosecutors are seeking to extradite McCabe to Ireland to face charges that he assaulted six boys there from 1973 to 1981. The lawsuit, filed in Sonoma County Superior Court, seeks unspecified damages for psychological and emotional harm. It says that the diocese committed fraud by not warning parishioners at St. Bernard Catholic Church in Eureka of McCabe's alleged history of abuse. "It screwed me up in a lot of ways in life," the alleged victim, who is referred to in his lawsuit as "John Doe 76," told The Chronicle. "Father Pat had a very personable way of talking to us, of making us trust him." The man said he did not tell anyone of the alleged abuse until last week. A spokesman for Santa Rosa Diocese did not return calls seeking comment. Two priests who worked with McCabe at St. Bernard told The Chronicle last week that they had not been told at the time about suspicions surrounding McCabe in Ireland. The diocese told parishioners nothing about McCabe until this week. In a letter posted on the parish website Tuesday, the diocese's bishop, Daniel Walsh, called for "anyone who might have been mistreated" to come forward. "Although to my knowledge the diocese has not directly received any allegations against this priest," Walsh wrote, "possibly he might have harmed some young children during his brief time" at St. Bernard. Irish report on priest McCabe's accuser, who still lives in Eureka, said he was a 9-year-old student at St. Bernard when the priest first molested him in 1984. The lawsuit says the abuse continued for six to nine months. The complaint is the first in the United States naming McCabe, who arrived at St. Bernard from the Archdiocese of Dublin in Ireland in 1983. A report last year on the Dublin Archdiocese's handling of abuse cases, sponsored by the Irish government, said Catholic officials there had moved McCabe after they became aware of complaints and sought to treat him with counseling and drugs. "The Diocese of Santa Rosa is a co-conspirator with Patrick McCabe," said Joseph George, the Sacramento attorney who filed the lawsuit. "They allowed their churches to be the dumping ground for a known pedophile." The lawsuit makes a fraud claim, he said, because the statute of limitations has expired on abuse complaints.Although McCabe's name is redacted in the report on priestly abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese, the details in the report are identical to McCabe's history. The report said the McCabe case "encapsulates everything that was wrong with the archdiocesan handling of child sexual abuse cases." Personal appeal from Dublin In 1983, the report said, the archbishop of Dublin, Dermot Ryan, appealed to Bishop Mark Hurley of Santa Rosa to allow McCabe to serve there. The report said it appeared that Hurley, who like Ryan is now dead, had been told of the priest's past. But when sexual abuse was being investigated in the Santa Rosa diocese in 1995, the report said, Hurley swore in a deposition that he had "torn up all the confidential personnel records before his resignation in 1987." Hurley agreed to accept the priest, the report said, but was forced to remove him from St. Bernard in 1985 after "stories of inappropriate conduct began to emerge." Hurley transferred the priest briefly to St. Elizabeth Church in Guerneville. The Santa Rosa Diocese, which oversees churches as far north as the Oregon border, has been hit hard by the Catholic Church's priest abuse scandal. More than a dozen priests have been accused of wrongdoing, and lawsuits nearly bankrupted the diocese. Hearing set for September McCabe has lived in Alameda for more than a decade, where he worked at a senior center leading recreational activities, said an attorney handling his extradition. The attorney said the evidence from Irish police appears to be weak. McCabe is being held in an Alameda County jail. His next hearing is set for Sept. 2 in a San Francisco courtroom. E-mail the writers at jberton@sfchronicle.com and dbulwa@sfchronicle.com.
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