HAGåTñA (GUAM)
Guam Daily Post
May 16, 2026
By Shane Tenorio Healy
The last active lawsuit alleging former Archbishop Anthony Apuron of sexual abuse in the federal court is on its way to being dismissed.
On Thursday in the District Court of Guam, Apuron’s lawyer Jacqueline Taitano Terlaje filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed against Apuron.
The case, first filed in the federal court in 2019, alleged Apuron sexually assaulted a student when he was a minor in the 1990s.
It was one of nine sexual assault lawsuits naming Apuron as a defendant, but now remains the last active case since the other eight were dismissed with prejudice a year ago.
Terlaje wrote in her motion, last May when the other suits were being dismissed, she had received a notice from the plaintiff indicating prosecution would continue after it had been stalled primarily by bankruptcy proceedings for the Archdiocese of Agana.
However, in the past year Terlaje stated she had not received any additional indication that prosecution would continue.
“Since that time Defendant Anthony Apuron has reached the age of 80 years, and Plaintiff has not engaged in any discovery effort to manage the prosecution of this matter,” Terlaje wrote.
While Terlaje also added two witnesses in the case have died since the allegations were raised as more an argument for the dismissal with prejudice, later on Thursday, Terlaje subsequently filed a stipulation to dismiss the charges with prejudice.
The stipulation indicates plaintiffs’s attorney Charles McDonald had agreed for the case to be dismissed with prejudice.
Although both lawyers have agreed to the dismissal, an official order from District Court of Guam Chief Judge Frances Tydingco-Gatewood is still pending.
Last May, when nine out of the 10 cases that named Apuron as a defendant were being dismissed, Terlaje issued a press release and video statement of Apuron addressing the dismissals.
“Over the past decade, I have been unjustly condemned by the media and in the public opinion because of certain false accusations made against me. In silence, I have accepted this injustice out of love for Jesus Christ, praying for those who were doing evil against me,” said Apuron who further called the dismissals “evidence” of his innocence.
The cases accusing Apuron were filed between 2017 and 2019, and in that time he had left Guam. According to Post files, a Vatican tribunal ultimately found Apuron guilty of having sexually abused minors, and Apuron was also prohibited from residing in Guam.
In response to those initial dismissals and Apuron’s message, Archbishop Ryan Jimenez, following consultation with the diocese’s legal counsel, stated the dismissals did not “operate as an adjudication about the merits of a particular case, but is a mechanism that allows parties to a particular civil case to mutually agree to end that legal matter.”
Jimenez additionally highlighted Apuron was found guilty of committing abuse against minors.
“That determination was made following a canonical investigation and penal trial conducted by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of Faith in Rome. The determination led to the former bishop losing his rank and duties as the leader of the Catholic Church on Guam, as well as perpetual prohibition preventing him from returning to Guam or presenting himself with the insignia attached to the rank of bishop,” Jimenez wrote.
“Nothing about that determination has changed,” Jimenez added.
- By Shane Tenorio Healy | The Guam Daily Post