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Lawsuit Accuses Priest of Concealing Sex Abuse, Denying Help to Victim

By Marie Szaniszlo
Boston Herald
July 18, 2018

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/local_coverage/2018/07/lawsuit_accuses_priest_of_concealing_sex_abuse_denying_help_to_victim

Attorney Carmen Durso with his client, John Doe No. 1001, during a press conference on Wednesday, July 18, 2018. Doe alleges he was sexually assaulted by Benedictine Brother Joseph Martin when Doe was a child. Staff Photo by Nancy Lane

A man who alleges he was raped as a child in the 1970s by a now-deceased Roman Catholic brother in Harvard, Mass., has filed a lawsuit accusing the head of the abbey where the abuse allegedly occurred of trying to conceal it and refusing to pay for his psychiatric treatment.

The plaintiff, identified as John Doe No. 1001 in a complaint filed Tuesday in Worcester Superior Court, alleges he was raped by Brother Joseph Martin at St. Benedict Abbey over four to five months, beginning in 1974, when he was 11.

The man, who was one of several boys who worked at the abbey, confided in a supervior there, according to the complaint, but the supervisor, who also is deceased now, did nothing to stop the abuse.

The plaintiff, now 55, yesterday said that for decades he suppressed memories of the abuse. He married, had a son and worked in several high-level positions with military and government contractors.

But his life began to unravel in 2013 while they were living in San Bernardino, Calif., where his wife wanted them and her three sons to attend a Catholic church.

The man objected, according to a Harvard police report, and when the couple went to see the church’s pastor for advice, the plaintiff told him what had happened to him as a child.

“I started falling apart, both at work and at home,” the man said yesterday at his lawyer’s office in Boston. He became suicidal; lost his job, his marriage and his home; and lived out of his car for a while, he said.

The monsignor he confided in contacted Harvard police, who met with the head of the abbey, Abbot Francis Xavier Connelly, in March 2013.

“Father Connelly stated...that this was the first time a sexual assault allegation had ever been made against Joseph Martin and/or St. Benedict’s Abbey,” Officer Daniele M. Fortunato said in her report.

A month later, Fortunato met with Martin, who had been diagnosed with dementia, at St. Francis House, a Worcester assisted-living facility.

When she asked whether he had touched the plaintiff, whom she referred to by his nickname, or anyone else without their consent, he admitted that he had, according to her report.

But no charges were ever filed because the statute of limitations in the 1970s was only six years, said Carmen Durso, the plaintiff’s attorney.

The lawsuit, which names Connelly, the abbey and its parent organization, the Swiss-American Benedictine Congregation, as defendants, alleges that Connelly failed to tell the plaintiff of Martin’s admission to police while he was alive, and that the abbot reneged on an agreement to help with the plaintiff’s psychiatric treatment.

In a statement yesterday, St. Benedict Abbey said it had cooperated fully with the police investigation and would do the same with any investigation by civil authorities.

 

 

 

 

 




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