NEW JERSEY
Courthouse News Service

By ROSE BOUBOUSHIAN

(CN) – The Diocese of Camden, N.J. cannot dismiss a woman’s claim that a priest sexually abused her repeatedly when she was 11 years old, a federal judge ruled.

Lisa Syvertson Shanahan, 44, sued the Diocese of Camden on May 15, 2012, claiming she had been sexually abused as a child by an ordained Catholic priest, Father Thomas Harkins of St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church in Hammonton, N.J.

Shanahan, whose “devoutly Catholic” family “regularly attended Mass and participated in the ministry” at St. Anthony’s, attended Harkins’s catechism (CCD) classes while she was in fifth grade, from 1980-81, to prepare for religious confirmation.

Harkins sexually abused her 10 to 15 occasions, in his office and his bedroom in the church rectory, “by touching her genitals over her underwear,” the complaint states.

During the final incident of abuse, Shanahan says, “Harkins brought…