NEW YORK/VERMONT
Troy Record
By Larry Neumeister, The Associated Press
POSTED: 02/07/14
NEW YORK >> A federal appeals court directed a lower court to dismiss the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany from a Vermont sex-abuse lawsuit Friday, saying it did not have enough connection to Vermont to subject it to substantial confidentiality interests at stake in the litigation that would likely force the diocese to divulge sensitive documents about sexual abuse investigations.
The lawsuit was brought by a man who said he was abused by a former priest in Vermont in the late 1980s when the priest transported him from New York to Vermont to sexually abuse him.
Gary Mercure of Troy was sentenced in 2011 to 20 to 25 years in state prison after he was convicted of raping two altar boys in western Massachusetts between 1986 and 1989, while he was a priest in the Diocese of Albany. He was defrocked in 2008. Mercure had denied the allegations and his lawyers said the complainants were coached into making abuse claims.
In ruling, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the Diocese of Albany did not have enough ties to Vermont to subject the diocese to the lawsuit. The appeals panel noted that the diocese operates no office or facility in Vermont and its percentage of contacts with Vermont compared to its activities in New York are trivial.
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.