Mercury News
For more than 40 years, the man said, he struggled with the emotional aftermath of being sexually abused by an uncle who was a respected Roman Catholic priest. Then he read that a dozen younger men came forward last year to accuse the same priest of molesting them.
The priest’s nephew said he felt both sadness and admiration for those who had the courage to reveal their secret pain. “We’re now getting together and we’re talking,” he said. “We’re finding some relief and comfort in doing that.”
They are doing more than talking: This month, the 57-year-old nephew filed a lawsuit seeking damages and alleging that his mother told church authorities in 1959 that the Rev. Joseph Pritchard had molested her son — nearly two decades before the priest allegedly abused dozens more children at St. Martin of Tours parish in San Jose.
In the past 12 months, attorneys said, about 100 men and women have filed lawsuits that lay the blame for childhood sexual abuse — by Pritchard and other priests — squarely at the feet of Catholic church officials in San Jose, Oakland and San Francisco.
Hundreds more claims have been filed around the state, under a California law that temporarily extended the right of molestation victims to seek damages from institutions that failed to protect them despite having “reason to know” an employee was a molester. The extension ends Wednesday.
