UNITED STATES
BishopAccountability.org
Summary of Case: Ruben V. Abaya is a Filipino priest who worked in the US from 1977 to 1982, in New Jersey. He was accused in a 1984 lawsuit with six other priests of sexual abuse of a girl 1980-1982 in the Los Angeles CA archdiocese. Abaya visited the other priests at St. Philomena parish in Carson CA in April 1980, and allegedly assaulted the girl then. The girl became pregnant by one of the priests (not Abaya). The priests fled the US and returned to the Philippines after the 1984 lawsuit was filed; the suit was then dropped. In 1991 Santiago Tamayo, the priest who first raped the girl, held a news conference to apologize to the victim for his own crimes and for involving the other priests in her abuse. In 2007, the LA archdiocese paid $500,000 to settle the victim’s case. A Rev. Ruben V. Abaya, JCD is listed online in a 2012-2013 Catholic directory as Defender of the Bond of the Laoag diocese and as chaplain for Monasterio de Santa Clara, a convent in Laoag City, province of Illocos Norte
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