SAN DIEGO (CA)
NBC
SAN DIEGO — There were new allegations Tuesday of sexual abuse against the Catholic Church in San Diego, and for the first time locally, a nun was named as an abuser.
NBC7/39 reported that the San Diego diocese might face as many as 80 more sexual-abuse lawsuits by the end of the year.
The boy referred to in the civil complaint as John Roe was 10 years old in 1969. He was a resident student at a boarding-house school next to the San Diego mission that was run by a Roman Catholic order of nuns at the time.
The civil complaint alleges that the boy was sexually abused by two employees of the school, a place his attorney, Irwin Zalkin, described as “a cesspool of pedophilia.”
“[The abuse was] not only by nuns, but by priests who would visit and minister there and by lay people who were invited to come to this facility to take care of kids, take them to a ballgame when, in fact, they were sexually abusing these children,” said Zalkin.
Another civil complaint, which was filed on behalf of Diana B., alleges that as a young teenager, she was sexually and physically abused from 1971 to 1972 by a nun named Sister Bridgette.
