Santa Fe archdiocese faces new suit as it seeks to conceal documents in separate abuse case

NEW MEXICO
The New Mexican

By Uriel J. Garcia
The New Mexican

A new lawsuit filed against the Archdiocese of Santa Fe says a 2015 film about widespread child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy in the Boston area triggered a New Mexico’s man’s childhood memories of being sexually abused by two priests at an Albuquerque church.

Attorneys representing the man, identified as John Doe 66, filed the suit Thursday in the 2nd Judicial District Court in Albuquerque. It also names the Church of Ascension Parish in Albuquerque’s South Valley as a defendant.

The lawsuit, one of more than 60 similar complaints against the archdiocese filed in the last few years by the Law Offices of Brad D. Hall, comes as the archdiocese has asked a state judge in the First Judicial District in Santa Fe to seal records in a separate case alleging sexual abuse by one of its priests.

Filed in December, that suit says seven San Miguel County men, who are not identified, were molested as children by a priest at Our Lady of Sorrows Church in Las Vegas, N.M. The priest, Monsignor Hubert C. Lomme, died in 1986 at age 79. The men’s attorneys are asking a judge to reject the archdiocese’s request earlier this month to conceal documents in the case. The request is “overbroad, complex and limiting,” the attorneys say, calling it a “gag order.”

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