(MD)
Washington Times [Washington, D.C.]
October 3, 2023
By Mark A. Kellner
Fondling, rape, other sexual assaults charged against ‘credibly accused’ clergy
The Archdiocese of Washington is the target of a class-action lawsuit accusing Roman Catholic officials of allowing clergy to sexually abuse children for decades.
The lawsuit was filed Monday in Prince George’s County Circuit Court, a day after Maryland’s Child Victims Act of 2023 took effect by lifting the statute of limitations on child sex abuse cases. The Archdiocese of Baltimore filed for bankruptcy on Friday, before the law was to take effect.
The lawsuit was brought by three survivors of alleged abuse from Maryland counties who were between 9 and 12 years old when they say the abuse occurred. Using the pseudonyms John Doe, Richard Roe and Mark Smith, the survivors say various clergy assaulted them.
Doe, born in 1985, says the Rev. Michael Mellone and Deacon Lawrence Bell abused him at St. Martin of Tours Catholic Church and its school in Gaithersburg. The assaults were separate and took place on property controlled by the archdiocese, the suit states.
The lawsuit says that an unnamed priest in the mid-1960s assaulted Roe, manipulating the child to strip to his underwear and climb into bed where the priest fondled him.