PITTSFIELD (MA)
The Berkshire Eagle
February 9, 2019
By Larry Parnass
Richard Koske knows he won’t get one of the things he wants most, when he meets Wednesday with the Diocesan Review Board:
Words from the priest he says drugged and assaulted him — an allegation the Springfield Diocese accepts as true.
Koske, 63, is scheduled to meet with the nine-member board that advises the diocese on clergy abuse matters, joined by his daughter and defender, Rebecca Koske.
The meeting comes eight years after Koske filed a complaint against the Rev. Eugene Honan. It comes six years after the diocese, having issued sanctions against Honan, paid Koske $20,000.
But Koske had never told his story directly to the review board. That time has come.
The South Hadley man says he will describe what happened in Honan’s Northampton rectory when Koske was in his 40s. If Koske had his way, the panel would call Honan in as well.
“If the board wants to hear my story, don’t they want to hear his?” he asked.
Before Koske accepted his settlement, he said he was urged by the diocese to halt communications with an attorney. Koske had been in contact with Mitchell Garabedian, the Boston lawyer who has represented scores of clergy abuse victims. Garabedian is portrayed in the movie “Spotlight” about The Boston Globe’s coverage of how the church acted over many years, at the highest levels, to conceal sexual abuse by priests.
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