PITTSBURGH (PA)
South Hills Community News
March 21, 2019
By Mike Jones
A former student at St. Bernard School filed a lawsuit last week alleging he was molested by a teacher at the Catholic grade school in Mt. Lebanon in the 2000s.
Pittsburgh-based attorney Robert Peirce III filed the lawsuit March 14 in Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas against the unnamed teacher, the school and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh in a case that could test the limits of the special Sex Abuse Victim Compensation fund set up last year by the diocese to help victims abused by predator priests.
The lawsuit claims the unidentified former student was molested at least five times during one school year while being tutored by the teacher, identified only as John Doe, because he was struggling with math. Doe was “abusing his role as a teacher and mentor to a young student breached the duty owed to his students” at the grade school that teaches pre-school students through eighth grade, the lawsuit states.
After the abuse, the lawsuit claims, the student began to abuse drugs and alcohol in high school to “repress the memories” from the alleged abuse. The student began seeing a therapist in December 2010 for behavioral issues, but didn’t tell his parents about the abuse until December 2017.
The Rev. Nicholas Nascov, spokesman for the Diocese of Pittsburgh, said he could not comment on the lawsuit, but that the “acts alleged do not involve anyone currently employed by Saint Bernard School.”
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