CALIFORNIA
San Francisco Chronicle
Ellen Huet
Published 2:55 pm, Wednesday, August 21, 2013
LAKEPORT, LAKE COUNTY — A Lake County family is suing a Roman Catholic parish and the Diocese of Santa Rosa, claiming they knew a priest had a history of sexual abuse and didn’t protect an altar boy from being molested.
The suit, filed Tuesday in Sonoma County Superior Court, claims that the late Rev. Ted Oswald of St. Mary Immaculate in Lakeport had already been accused several times of abusing young parishioners, but was still promoted to pastor and allowed unsupervised access to young boys at and outside the church.
The suit claims that unfettered access allowed Oswald to abuse an altar boy, now 16 years old, whose mother is also a plaintiff in the suit.
Oswald targeted the boy when he was about 10 years old, said the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Skye Daley. The priest invited the boy to wash his recreational vehicle at his house, which is where the alleged abuse began, Daley 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.