Advocates for victims of clergy abuse said they urged Bishop Richard G. Lennon yesterday during their long-awaited first meeting to tell church lawyers to stop fighting so aggressively the avalanche of lawsuits alleging sexual abuseWilliam J. Gately, a leader of the New England chapter of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, said Lennon contended that ''many of the tactics were not of his doing.'' But Gately said the bishop was noncommittal when pressed to get involved in the cases.
Gately and Webb said they urged Lennon to tell church lawyers to drop their argument that the cases filed by some 500 alleged victims of sexual abuse by priests should be dismissed based on the First Amendment principle of the separation of church and state. They also contended that lawyers of the accused priests were demanding access to the alleged victims' therapy records.
A Catholic priest in Palm Beach County was sentenced to 51 months in federal prison on Monday for soliciting sex from what he thought was a 14-year-old boy he had met over the Internet.The 14-year-old was in fact an undercover police officer.
"On my part, it was more of a curiosity than anything of a sexual act," Guimaraes said, before finally retracting the statement and admitting that he and the "boy" arranged to meet in Delray Beach and "we did mention if it was agreed between the two of us we may have sexual relations." The priest said the two discussed plans to "touch each other and perhaps masturbate and perhaps also oral sex