CONNECTICUT
Hartford Courant
Dave Altimari
The Hartford Archdiocese has agreed to pay a former altar boy at a New Haven church $500,000 to settle a lawsuit alleging former priest Stephen Bzdyra molested the boy over a three-year period in the 1980s.
The case was scheduled to go to trial next month, but on Wednesday New Haven attorney Joel Faxon announced that his client, William Dotson, had settled the case for $500,000. Unlike many lawsuits against the church where the plaintiff uses a pseudonym, Dotson allowed his name to be public.
“The plaintiff’s position has always been that the Diocese should have taken action to eliminate Bzdyra’s ongoing and serious threat to children within the Diocese — especially to our client William Dotson, who Bzdyra repeatedly sexually abused over the course of several years,” said Timothy P. Pothin, an attorney with Faxon Law Group in New Haven.
The lawsuit, initially filed in 2010, alleged that while Dotson was an altar boy at St. Francis Church in New Haven in the 1980s, Bzdyra molested him repeatedly in the church rectory. The lawsuit also accused Bzdyra of paying Dotson hush money, including buying him a car and a new washer and dryer.
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.