Priest accused of abuse in 1980s

NEW MEXICO
ABQ Journal

By T.S. Last / Journal Staff Writer on Wed, Apr 3, 2013

A 37-year-old man filed a lawsuit in Second Judicial District Court in Albuquerque on Tuesday alleging that a Roman Catholic priest in Questa sexually molested him over a 1 1/2-year period in the 1980s.

The lawsuit alleges that the Rev. Michael O’Brien abused the plaintiff, identified only as “John Doe” in the complaint, beginning when he was about 10 or 11 years old and while he was in training to become an altar boy at St. Anthony Parish in Questa, north of Taos.

According to the complaint, the alleged abuse began with what the now-deceased O’Brien, known as “Father Mike,” called “massage time” and “escalated to the point that Fr. O’Brien committed many counts of criminal sexual contact and penetration against Plaintiff.”

The lawsuit states that the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, which oversees parishes in northern New Mexico, and St. Anthony Parish knew or should have known that O’Brien was a pedophile priest and had “unbridled access to children.” It further alleges that the archdiocese placed O’Brien and other pedophile priests into New Mexico parishes and “deliberately chose to conceal the fact of the priest’s problems.”

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