Clergy Sex-abuse Crisis Isn’t Over, Lawyer Says, Citing Recent Settlements

By Laura Crimaldi
Boston Globe
May 7, 2019

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/05/07/clergy-sex-abuse-crisis-isn-over-lawyer-says-citing-recent-settlements/2ZyfzOcw6ml52yLKeDIOeN/story.html

Attorney Mitchell Garabedian (right) comforted Nadine Tifft (center) at the conclusion of a press conference where he released the names of seven Boston Archdiocesan Priests credibly accused of sexual abusing minor children. (JESSICA RINALDI/GLOBE STAFF)

The religious retreats behind the Stamford, Vt., home where Nadine Tifft lived as a teenager were a destination for Franciscan priests, who regularly traveled there to pray and fast.

But 19 years ago, Tifft said, one of those priests, the Rev. John Sweeney of the Franciscans of Primitive Observance, told her she was possessed and performed an exorcism on her. At a press conference Tuesday in a downtown Boston hotel, Tifft said that Sweeney molested her during the encounter. She was 17 years old at the time.

“We were teenagers who trusted this priest who did the exorcisms over us as if we were possessed. He then used that forum to go on to molest others,” said Tifft, 37, who spoke in the company of her husband, Paul, and lawyer, Mitchell Garabedian. Garabedian called the abuse “cultlike.”