News
2007-07-13
Lawsuit alleges
priest sex abuse in Delaware
A man filed a
lawsuit Thursday alleging he was molested as a teen by a
Catholic priest, becoming the first person to sue under a
A man filed a
lawsuit Thursday alleging he was molested as a teen by a
Catholic priest, becoming the first person to sue under a
new Delaware law allowing child sexual abuse victims
to seek damages for misdeeds that occurred years ago.
Robert Quill, 52,
a Wilmington, Del., native who lives in Marathon,
Fla., filed a federal lawsuit alleging that as a teenager he
was molested at least 300 times by the Reverend
Francis G. DeLuca, who worked for the Catholic diocese
of Wilmington for 35 years.
Quill's lawsuit
alleges that church officials in Wilmington knew as early
as 1958 that DeLuca was sexually abusing young boys, yet
continued to allow him to serve as a priest for a
generation.
The lawsuit was
filed less than 48 hours after Gov. Ruth Ann Minner
signed a law abolishing Delaware's two-year statute of
limitations on personal injury lawsuits for victims of
child sex abuse.
In the early
1990s, DeLuca, now 77, retired to his hometown of Syracuse,
N.Y., where he pleaded guilty last month to repeatedly
sexually abusing a boy there.
Shortly after
DeLuca was arrested in New York, Wilmington bishop Michael
Saltarelli released the names of 20 diocesan priests,
including DeLuca, against whom the diocese had
substantiated allegations of child sexual abuse.
A phone number
for DeLuca in New York could not immediately be found.
Quill retired as
a staff attorney for the federal appeals court in
Atlanta after being diagnosed in 2002 with post-traumatic
stress disorder.
He is seeking
compensatory and punitive damages worth at least $2.5
million, the amount he said he lost in salary and pension
benefits when he retired early because of his
condition. (AP)
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