ALBANY (NY)
Albany Times Union
December 11, 2019
By Cayla Harris
For years, two siblings have claimed that they were sexually abused by a former Greene County priest — but New York’s statute of limitations only allowed one of them to pursue legal action against their alleged abuser.
That changed Monday, when Ivan Morales Jr. sued 82-year-old Jeremiah Nunan under the state’s recently enacted Child Victims Act.
The case, filed in the state Supreme Court in Albany, alleges that Nunan abused Morales from 1989 to 1995, when he was 9 to 15 years old and an altar boy at Sacred Heart Church in Cairo. Morales, now a 39-year-old state trooper, first brought forth the accusations in 2011 after his sister confessed the abuse to their parents. Morales was too old to file either civil or criminal charges.
At the time, New York’s statute of limitations time-barred child sex abuse cases after the survivor reached age 23 — a window Morales had missed by several years. But in August, the Child Victims Act opened a one-year period for survivors of all ages to sue their alleged abusers. So far, more than 1,200 cases statewide have been filed under the law.
Morales’ lawsuit does not include specific allegations: “As a victim of Father Nunan’s sexual abuse, Plaintiff is unable at this time to fully describe all of the details of that abuse and the extent of the harm he suffered as a result,” the complaint reads. Mitchell Garabedian, a Boston attorney who is serving as co-counsel on the case, declined to elaborate on the accusations but said his client “has empowered himself” by coming forward.
“Given that my client was sexually abused from approximately 9 years old to 15 years old … over 100 times, it is difficult for victims of sexual abuse to believe that the supervisors of Father Nunan did not know that he was sexually abusing children in a wholesale fashion,” he said.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.