STOCKTON (CA)
Lodi News-Sentinel
By Ross Farrow/News-Sentinel Staff Writer
The mother of the 37-year-old man suing Father Michael Kelly on a child sexual abuse allegation told a jury Wednesday that she and her then-husband saw Kelly tickle and roughhouse with her two children during the mid-1980s, but she said she felt too intimidated to question his actions.
“We didn’t say anything because it’s very hard to admonish a priest,” the woman said during the fifth day of the civil trial against Kelly, pastor of Lockeford’s St. Joachim’s Catholic Church since 2004.
The plaintiff’s mother began testimony Wednesday afternoon in San Joaquin County Superior Court. Her son, whose name is being withheld by court order, claims that Kelly sexually abused him in the 1980s, when the plaintiff was an altar boy at Stockton’s Cathedral of the Annunciation.
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