Apuron’s Fellow Altar Boy Files Clergy Abuse Lawsuit

By Haidee V Eugenio
Pacific Daily News
April 6, 2017

http://www.guampdn.com/story/news/2017/04/06/apurons-fellow-altar-boy-files-clergy-abuse-lawsuit/100110602/

Dulce Nombre de Maria Cathedral-Basilica was lit with blue lights on April 6, 2017, to mark Autism Awareness Month, Sexual Assault Awareness Month and Child Abuse Prevention Month. Masako Watanabe/PDN

A man who was an altar boy with Archbishop Anthony S. Apuron in Mongmong in the late 1950s became the 46th person to file a Guam clergy sex abuse lawsuit.

A man identified in court documents only by his initials, D.C., to protect his privacy, alleged in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that the late Father Antonio Cruz sexually abused him in 1957 or 1958, when he and Apuron were the only two altar boys at Nuestra Senora De Las Aguas in Mongmong. D.C. was 13 or 14 years old at the time.

While D.C. quit being an altar boy after Cruz allegedly sexually abused him, Apuron went on to become an ordained priest and Guam's archbishop for nearly 31 years.

Apuron, who's identified Cruz as his mentor, is undergoing a Vatican canonical penal trial and is facing civil lawsuits allegedly for raping or sexually abusing four altar boys in the 1970s when he was a parish priest in Agat.

D.C., represented attorney Anthony C. Perez, filed the case in the Superior Court of Guam against the Archdiocese of Agana and up to 20 others who may have helped conceal or cover up the sexual abuse. Cruz, who died in 1986 at the age of 62, is one of eight Guam clergy who were named in the 46 lawsuits filed so far in local and federal court.

Complaints amended

Also on Thursday, attorneys David Lujan and Gloria Lujan Rudolph amended two clergy sex abuse complaints filed in federal court. They added the Boy Scouts of America and its Aloha Council Chamorro District to the list of named defendants in complaints listing former priest and former scout master Louis Brouillard as a defendant.

The amended complaints also increase the minimum demand for damages from $5 million to $10 million. The first two complaints amended were filed by former altar boys Leo Tudela and Bruce A. Diaz. More will be amended in coming days, the law firm said.

heugenio@guampdn.com