BOSTON (MA)
Associated Press via Star Tribune
July 18, 2018
By Alanna Durkin Richer
A man who says he was sexually assaulted as a child by a Roman Catholic monk in Massachusetts has filed a lawsuit accusing a priest of trying to conceal the abuse and refusing to help pay for his mental health treatment.
The man said in the lawsuit filed on Tuesday that he was raped by Brother Joseph Martin while he worked at Saint Benedict Abbey in Harvard, Massachusetts in the 1970s.
The lawsuit says Abbot Francis Xavier Connelly knew Martin admitted to police in 2013 that he had engaged in inappropriate acts, but didn’t tell the man about Martin’s admission while Martin was alive. It also accuses Connelly of reversing course after initially agreeing to pay for the treatment for the man, who was suicidal.
“He promised to help me and then kind of yanked the rug out from underneath me,” the man told reporters on Wednesday. The man is not identified in the lawsuit and The Associated Press does not identify people who say they’re victims of sexual assault unless they grant permission.
Neither the abbey nor its congregation immediately returned voicemails or emails seeking comment.
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