STOCKTON (CA)
Lodi News-Sentinel
By Ross Farrow/News-Sentinel Staff Writer
STOCKTON — Defense attorneys claimed on Tuesday that the 37-year-old former altar boy suing popular Lockeford priest Michael Kelly may have been sexually assaulted by someone else.
During cross examination, clinical psychologist Amy Charney, a witness for the plaintiff, testified that the plaintiff was in fourth grade, not fifth, when he was sexually assaulted. Charney’s statement contradicts the plaintiff’s testimony on Friday that Kelly sexually assaulted him in fifth grade.
Defense attorney Tom Beatty, representing Kelly, noted that Kelly didn’t begin his duties at Cathedral of the Annunciation in Stockton until June 1984, when the plaintiff was completing fourth grade.
However, Charney said that people with repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse are often fuzzy on actual dates and times of traumatic events. She added that children sometimes shut off their memories of events like sexual assault for more than 20 years, as she said was the case with the plaintiff suing Kelly.
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