Ex-altar boy is first in Penn. to file lawsuit against Catholic Church since bombshell AG report

PENNSYLVANIA
NBC News

November 12, 2018

By Corky Siemaszko

The Allentown Diocese did not tell parishioners there was an admitted molesting priest in their flock

A former altar boy claimed in a lawsuit Monday that he was molested repeatedly by a Pennsylvania priest who had admitted sexually abusing another boy a decade earlier — and who had been cleared to work with kids by a New Mexico clinic for troubled clergy that was derided in Catholic circles as “Camp Ped.”

Bruno Tucci, now 76, allegedly abused the altar boy — who is identified in court papers only as a 29-year-old “John Doe” — between 1999 and 2001 at the Our Lady of Mount Carmel parish in Nesquehoning, a small town 30 miles north of Allentown, Pennsylvania.

On one occasion, Tucci allegedly told the then pre-teen boy to “put his arms out like Jesus on the cross” while he fondled his exposed genitals, the lawsuit states.

“He is a broken young man,” the accuser’s chief lawyer, Gerald Williams, said during a press conference in Philadelphia. “He veers from anger to despair to depression.”

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