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  Archdiocese Is Sued over Alleged Abuse

By J. Michael Parker
San Antonio Express-News [Texas]
August 17, 2004

A former employee at two area Catholic parishes is suing the Society of Mary and the Archdiocese of San Antonio for an undetermined amount of money, claiming a priest sexually abused her for three years in the 1970s.

Cynthia Anne Tejeda, 42, filed the suit last Friday, saying Father Patrick McNulty, a Society of Mary priest and associate pastor of Holy Rosary Parish who died in 1984, repeatedly engaged in inappropriate sexual contact.

"In the tender years of my adolescence, I was sexually exploited, abused, betrayed, abandoned and traumatized," Tejeda said at a Monday news conference.

Brother Stephen Glodek, provincial superior of the Society of Mary, said the province paid for Tejeda's medical treatment, but balked at her demand that it finance her continued education for a master's degree.

"Since learning of her allegations in 2000, we've acted in good faith and attempted to provide support for Cindy - inpatient and outpatient therapy, medication and educational expenses for the past two years. We had a cap, and she reached that in May 2004," he said.

Tejeda said she was 12 when the abuse began in 1974, and that she first disclosed the abuse in 1977 to Father David Fleming, then assistant provincial of the Society of Mary's St. ***SEE CORRECTION*** Louis Province. McNulty remained at Holy Rosary until 1980 and served at Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish in Helotes from 1980 to 1982. He died at a Marianist facility in Gilville, Wis., in 1984.

CORRECTION-DATE: August 21, 2004, Saturday

CORRECTION:

Due to a reporting error, this article on a lawsuit against the Society of Mary and the Archdiocese of San Antonio misstated the year a female sexual abuse victim first made her allegations to the Society of Mary. Someone else made an allegation to the religious order in 1977 but the victim and her parents denied it. She made her first allegation in 2002.

Contact: J. Michael Parker jparker@express-news.net

 
 

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