NORTH CAROLINA
Stanly News and Press
By Tiffany Thompson for the SNAP
CNHI
Tuesday, June 24, 2014 — A civil lawsuit that was pending against Father Michael Joseph Kelleher in Mecklenburg County Superior Court has been dismissed after a trial judge ruled that the case exceeded the statute of limitations. Two unnamed men, who reported that Kelleher sexually abused them while they were in their teens, filed the lawsuit Sept. 28, 2011.
The lawsuit stated that “since at least the mid-1970s, [the Charlotte Diocese] has known or should have known that Father Joseph Kelleher was abusing minors and also that he was spending long periods of time alone with them in the rectory, at other locations and on overnight trips both within and outside the territory of the defendant diocese.”
According to the court’s recent ruling, however, the two men waited too long to report their claims of sexual abuse and therefore exceeded the statute of limitations.
Seth Langson, a Charlotte attorney who represented the two men, confirmed that he has 30 days in which to file an appeal to the judge’s decision.
“It is critical to remember that this ruling did not have anything to do with whether the Diocese had covered up and concealed sexual abuse by priests or whether Father Kelleher and/or Father Richard Farwell had abused our clients,” Langson said in his “A Voice for Victims of Sexual Abuse” blog.
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