PENNSYLVANIA
PennLive
By Matt Miller | mmiller@pennlive.com
on October 06, 2015
Two men who claim they were sexually abused by Catholic priests decades ago waited too long to sue the Archdiocese of Philadelphia over the alleged assaults, a state court panel ruled Tuesday.
The Superior Court decision backs an earlier ruling by a Philadelphia judge who dismissed the lawsuits filed against the archdiocese by Francis Finnegan of Delaware County and Philip Gaughan of Delaware.
Both men filed their complaints independently in March 2011, and appealed the initial dismissals to the state court last year.
PennLive does not normally name people who allege they were victims of sexual abuse. However, Finnegan and Gaughan told the Associated Press in interviews soon after their suits were filed that they wanted to be named to encourage other victims to come forward.
The Superior Court opinion, written by President Judge Susan Peikes Gantman, notes that Finnegan, now 54, claims he was abused repeatedly from 1968 to 1970. Finnegan claimed in his suit that he suppressed the memories of the abuse until 2007. Those memories then came back to him “in waves,” he claimed and he reported the abuse to the archdiocese’s victim assistance program in 2008.
Finnegan, who was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, refused the archdiocese’s offers of medical and psychological assistance before filing his suit in Philadelphia County Court, Gantman noted.
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