More Argument In Priest Abuse Case

CONNECTICUT
The Hartford Courant

By EDMUND H. MAHONY, emahony@courant.com
The Hartford Courant

7:01 p.m. EST, February 3, 2012
WATERBURY—
The parties trying a sexual abuse complaint against the Archdiocese of Hartford spent much of Friday arguing over how much the jury should hear of testimony given at a related legal proceeding by one of the world’s foremost experts on clergy sexual abuse.

The subject of the argument was a transcript of a deposition taken in November from Thomas P. Doyle, a priest, canon lawyer, former Vatican diplomat and authority on child abuse. In 2006, Doyle co-authored, with A.W. Richard Sipe and Patrick J. Wall, the book “Sex, Priests, and Secret Codes: The Catholic Church’s 2,000-Year Paper Trail of Sexual Abuse.”

In 1985, concerned that the bishops of the Catholic Church were ill-equipped to deal with growing evidence of clergy abuse, Doyle also co-wrote a manual on preventing and reacting to abuse that was considered the definitive work on the subject at the time.

That manual was one of the subjects discussed Friday in the suit by a former altar boy who claims he was sexually abused by Father Ivan Ferguson, often at a church rectory in Derby, from 1981 to 1983. The suit contends the church allowed the abuse to take place because it failed to act when Ferguson admitted molesting two boys two years earlier, in 1979, in the Tarriffville section of Simsbury.

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