MAINE
Bangor Daily News
By Darren Fishell, BDN Staff
Posted April 07, 2015
PORTLAND, Maine — Robert Hoatson spent Tuesday morning walking in front of the Catholic diocese building at 510 Ocean Ave., carrying a sign that said “Reaching out to abuse victims.”
The national advocate for people sexually abused by Catholic clergy and a Boston attorney have alleged a letter uncovered through a lawsuit shows that Catholic Church leaders in Maine knew abuses by the Rev. James Vallely — who is now deceased — began earlier than previously admitted.
“It’s just another indication that the church still has not come clean and we’re calling on them to finally — let’s have the absolute truth,” Hoatson said. “Release all the documents about every priest that you’ve ever had an allegation against and let the victims heal.”
Hoatson, a former priest, said he has counseled more than 3,000 sexual abuse victims through the New Jersey-based nonprofit group Road to Recovery Inc., which he founded in 2005.
He said he hoped his trip from New Jersey to Portland would cause more people who were sexually abused by Vallely to come forward. The church previously acknowledged there were credible abuse allegations against Vallely that extended back to 1977.
A 2005 letter from the Rev. Richard P. Rice uncovered through a now-settled lawsuit filed in 2013 by two former altar servers at a South Berwick parish suggests that church leaders knew Vallely sexually abused boys before 1956, according to Boston attorney Mitchell Garabedian.
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.