NEW YORK
The New York Times
By SHARON OTTERMAN
Published: September 19, 2012
A once-prominent Roman Catholic monsignor who was removed from the priesthood in 2010 for sexual abuse of a minor took the unusual step on Wednesday of filing a federal lawsuit against the New York Archdiocese, claiming he had been libeled in a church statement.
Lawyers for the former monsignor, Charles M. Kavanagh, now 75, filed the lawsuit in Federal District Court in Manhattan, citing what they said was a startling turn of events that took place earlier this year. In April, Mr. Kavanagh’s accuser, Daniel Donohue, told a federal judge that he had not been truthful in one of the most damaging parts of his testimony to a secret church tribunal that considered sexual abuse charges against Mr. Kavanagh in 2006.
Mr. Donohue, now 48 and living in Portland, Ore., alleged in 2002 that Mr. Kavanagh had repeatedly molested him in the late 1970s, when he was a high school student at Cathedral Preparatory Seminary in Manhattan and Mr. Kavanagh was the rector there.
According to the civil complaint filed on Wednesday, the 2006 church tribunal, whose findings were never fully disclosed publicly, found Mr. Kavanagh guilty of holding hands with Mr. Donohue while Mr. Donohue’s hand was in his lap, and judged that to be sexual abuse of a minor. The church tribunal also found “to a moral certainty” that Mr. Kavanagh, wearing only underwear, had pressed up against Mr. Donohue in bed on a trip to Washington when Mr. Donohue was a high school senior, the complaint said.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.