NEW JERSEY
Courier-Post
Written by
JIM WALSH
Courier-Post Staff
CAMDEN — A North Carolina woman has sued the Diocese of Camden, alleging church officials failed to protect her from an abusive priest in the early 1980s.
Lisa Syvertson Shanahan alleges the Rev. Thomas Harkins molested her on multiple occasions in 1980 and 1981 at a Hammonton church. The assaults stopped, the lawsuit says, when Harkins “suddenly” left St. Anthony of Padua parish in 1982.
The lawsuit asserts that Harkins was removed from the parish after another girl accused him of assaulting her, but that church officials did not make that public. Harkins was removed from the priesthood in 2002, after the diocese had settled two complaints in the 1980s that alleged he had abused young girls in Hammonton.
This is the second lawsuit brought against the diocese this year alleging sexual abuse by a priest. An Ohio man, Mark Bryson, sued in January, alleging he had been abused about 45 years ago by the Rev. Joseph Shannon at a Camden parish, also called St. Anthony of Padua.
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