FLORIDA
News-Press
[with video]
Mary Wozniak, mwozniak@news-press.com August 19, 2014
The Diocese of Venice will pay six figures to settle a sex abuse case involving a now-defrocked priest and man who was abused at age 16, the man’s attorney announced Tuesday.
The accuser, now 37, came forward with his claim in 2008. In response, the priest, the Rev. Jean Ronald Joseph, of St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Fort Myers, held a 2009 news conference declaring his innocence and naming the victim.
A confidential document, leaked by a priest to the accuser’s father this year, details a subsequent 4.5-year investigation and 2013 diocesan trial in which Joseph was found guilty, and dismissed, said attorney Adam Horowitz. If not for the priest’s action, “it would never see the light of day,” he said.
His client knew none of this until his father received the document, Horowitz said in a news conference releasing the document and announcing the settlement. He declined to name a more specific settlement figure.
“This is a case in which the priest held a press conference to call his victim a liar,” Horowitz said. Instead, the diocesan trial found the accuser to be credible, he said.
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