CHARLOTTE (NC)
The Charlotte Observer
December 22, 2020
By Michael Gordon
The Charlotte Catholic Church’s sexual-abuse scandal among priests continued to widen Tuesday as another accuser surfaced to say he had been abused by Robert Yurgel, a now-defrocked priest who served almost eight years in prison for assaulting another child at St. Matthew.
According to the lawsuit filed in Mecklenburg County, a California man said Yurgel abused him multiple times at the Ballantyne church when the man was between 5 and 7 years old. The abuse began in July 1997 and lasted about two years, says the accuser’s attorney, Nate Foote of Harrisburg, Pa.
“What Yurgel would do is basically lie to our client and tell him they needed to engage in this behavior as part of confession. That’s how he got him alone,” Foote told the Observer on Tuesday.
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