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[Jackie]

Priest Abuse Verdict: Jury Finds Archdiocese Negligent And Reckless; $1 Million For Victim
Former Altar Boy Awarded $1 Million In Damages For Abuse By Priest Church Knew Was A Pedophile
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By EDMUND H. MAHONY, emahony@courant.com The Hartford Courant

1:36 p.m. EST, February 10, 2012
WATERBURY —

A Superior Court jury decided Friday morning that the Catholic Archdiocese of Hartford had been reckless and negligent in allowing a priest the church knew to be a pedophile to have access to children and that a former altar boy the priest sexually abused three decades ago should receive $1 million in damages.

The now-adult victim, identified in his suit as Jacob Doe, said the verdict validates "that things that occurred in the past were not my fault or the fault of any of the victims. …This is the most important part of my healing process."

Doe added: "This predator was placed in a position where he could harm me and my friend. … I'm hoping that other victims can begin their healing process, and the church does the right thing going forward."
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Doe said the church viciously attacked him and, by extension, his family in defending against the lawsuit, and that the support of his family got him "through this."

"My family and my attorney — without them I would not be where I am in my healing process," Doe said.

He said he no longer goes to church but will explore whether that will change, in consultation with the woman he called his best friend. He said he has not lost his faith.

"I don't go to church," Doe said, "but if anything, my faith is stronger."

The victim's father, a former church deacon who testified during the trial, said the verdict was "like a new beginning.

"Accountability is where it should be," Doe's father said. "Now he can start to heal. It's off his shoulders."

The two men and four women on the civil jury deliberated for about two hours Thursday afternoon and an hour and a half Friday.

Jury foreman Mary Pat Noonan said she needed time to "decompress" before talking in detail about the verdict.

"We were trying so hard to do what was right by everybody, and I don't think I can talk right now," she said. "We were working very hard together to be fair … and we are very proud of the job we did."

Doe's lawyer, Thomas McNamara of New Haven, said: "It's a great day for my client and for all victims of childhood sexual abuse. I'd like to thank the jury for their careful consideration of the upsetting facts of this case. The verdict sends one more message that victims no longer have to live in the darkness of the damage that childhood sexual abuse has caused them."

John Sitarz, the lawyer who represented the archdiocese, had no comment.

'Amputation Of His Spirit'

In his closing argument Thursday, McNamara told jurors that Doe — who was abused by Father Ivan Ferguson in the early 1980s when Doe was 13 to 15 — probably can never be compensated for the "amputation of his spirit."

"You can't put a price on that," attorney McNamara said. "It's worth more than $1 million. It's worth more than $2 million. Not even $3 million will compensate him."

Doe presented evidence during a week-long trial that senior church officials put Ferguson in a position where he could abuse Doe despite Ferguson having admitted to church officials two years earlier that he had sexually abused other boys.

Sitarz conceded in his closing argument Thursday that the abuse by Ferguson occurred, and he characterized it as despicable. But Sitarz argued to the jury that former Archbishop John F. Whealon allowed Ferguson to resume contact with children only after experts at a church clinic concluded that Ferguson could control his sexual attraction to boys.

Sitarz also rejected the victim's claims that he will likely suffer for life from depression and traumatic stress associated with the abuse, and he asked the jury to reject the victim's claim that he is due millions in compensation "His proposal can easily be seen by all of you as excessive," Sitarz said. "You all know the value of a dollar."

Over two hours of closing arguments, the lawyers agreed, as they had during the trial, on the nature of Ferguson's abuse. And, just as they had during the trial, they disagreed on the central issue before the jury — whether the church acted reasonably and carefully after learning for the first time in 1979 that Ferguson was probably a pedophile.

Evidence produced during the trial, mostly memorandums and letters from archdiocese files, showed that Whealon learned from a mother's complaint in March 1979 that Ferguson had abused two young brothers in Simsbury. The records show that Whealon confronted Ferguson, who admitted the abuse but blamed his behavior on alcohol abuse.

Whealon then wrote in a memo to church files that Ferguson, about 44 at the time, admitted that he had failed repeatedly since age 10 to control "homosexual" urges. Whealon forced Ferguson, who died in 2002, to submit to four months of treatment at the St. Luke Institute, a church clinic then located in Massachusetts and known for treating alcoholic clergy.
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At the conclusion of Ferguson's in-patient treatment, the clinic director cleared Ferguson to return to the ministry and said that Ferguson's sexual attraction to boys could be controlled as long as his drinking was controlled.

In the summer of 1979, Whealon assigned Ferguson to a parochial high school for girls in Milford. In 1981, Ferguson was again reassigned, that time as principal of St. Mary's grammar school in Derby, were he befriended and abused Doe and Doe's best friend, another altar boy. The director of the St. Luke Institute approved both assignments.

McNamara argued that the so-called treatment of pedophila at the St. Luke Institute was a sham. He said the records and other evidence show that St. Luke Institute was capable of treating only alcohol and drug abuse, not psychosexual disorders such as pedophilia.

The church, McNamara argued, was more concerned with keeping Ferguson's behavior a secret than it was in treating it.

In addition, McNamara said there is evidence that Ferguson's superiors in the church failed to act on signs that he was behaving inappropriately toward children after he had been assigned to St. Mary's.

Among other things, there was testimony at the trial that, after his release from the St. Luke Institute, Ferguson often invited boys to sleepover parties in his rectory rooms. Doe testified that Ferguson partially undressed so he could shower with and soap the backs of grammar school boys following gym class.

McNamara scoffed at an argument by Sitarz that little was known three decades ago about the nature of pedophilia and whether it could be treated.

"Thirty years ago, murder was murder, children were children, and rape was rape," McNamara said. "It wasn't that long ago."

During the trial, Doe's parents —a former church deacon and a former parish nurse — both testified about their shock when their son disclosed to them three years ago that Ferguson, whom the family had known for years, had abused him and his best friend.

"We all started to cry," Doe's father testified. "It was shocking. It was painful, because I could feel his pain. Anger. Anger at the hierarchy of the church to allow this to happen. And guilty. I felt guilty that I had allowed this to happen."

He also testified that he "remained an active, practicing Catholic" in spite of what he learned from his son.