WISCONSIN
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel
May 22, 2012
The jury in a landmark sex abuse case against the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay is expected to take up the issue of punitive damages Wednesday.
An Outagamie County jury on Monday awarded $700,000 to brothers Todd and Troy Merryfield, who were molested as children by the now defrocked Father John Patrick Feeney in the 1970s. Jurors found that the diocese defrauded the Merryfields because it knew Feeney was a danger to children and assigned him to their parish without telling members of his history.
Feeney was convicted in 2004 of molesting the brothers. He was released from prison last year.
The lawsuit marks the first time a plaintiff has successfully sued the Catholic Church in Wisconsin over clergy sex abuse since the state Supreme Court barred such negligent supervision cases on First Amendment grounds in 1995. It reopened them in 2007, under the fraud statute.
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