CALIFORNIA
Lodi News-Sentinel

By Ross Farrow/News-Sentinel Staff Writer

Father Michael Kelly stated emphatically under oath on Tuesday that he has never sexually assaulted a child.

Kelly, pastor at St. Joachim’s Catholic Church in Lockeford the past eight years, is defending himself in a lawsuit on a sexual assault allegation by a 37-year-old man who was an altar boy in the 1980s. Kelly maintains that such a thing never happened.

“His recollection is completely different from mine,” Kelly said of the plaintiff, who attended Church of the Annunciation in Stockton and attended the church’s parochial school in the 1980s.