Victim Speaks in Priest's Abuse Trial
By Denise Lavoie for The Associated Press
Originally published by The Associated Press, January 18, 2002
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — In one of the country's most prominent cases involving clergy charged with child molestation, a defrocked Roman Catholic priest facing a list of molestation accusations went on trial Wednesday for allegedly abusing a 10-year-old boy.
John J. Geoghan is charged with indecent assault and battery on a person under the age of 14 for allegedly touching the boy in the fall of 1991.
The boy, now 20 and a college student, took the stand Wednesday. He testified that he had been teaching himself to dive at a Boys and Girls Club swimming pool in Waltham when Geoghan, whom he recognized as a priest he'd seen at his housing project, asked if he needed help.
The boy said Geoghan coached him only with words—at first. Then, he said, Geoghan reached into his swimming trunks and grabbed his buttocks.
"I felt a hand go up the back of my leg. … It was kind of like bells went off. I got really nervous," the man testified.
"I got away as fast as possible," he said.
The defense maintains Geoghan, 66, was helping the boy hoist himself out of the pool. The young man maintained on cross-examination that he was not trying to hoist himself out of the pool at the time.
"The offense for which the defendant stands charged took but a few seconds, but those few seconds are forever emblazoned on the memory of (the young man)," prosecutor Lynn Rooney said in her opening statement.
Defense attorney Geoffrey Packard suggested that the young man was motivated by money, noting he did not consult an attorney until 1999.
The testimony began after brief opening statements Wednesday in the first of three criminal cases against Geoghan.
In addition to the criminal cases, 84 civil lawsuits have been filed and more than 130 people have claimed Geoghan fondled or raped them during the three decades he served in Boston-area parishes.
Last week, Cardinal Bernard Law publicly apologized to Geoghan's victims and ordered clergy and volunteers to report allegations of abuse against minors. The Archdiocese of Boston will have "zero tolerance" for sexual abuse by priests, he said.
Law's apology came just days after The Boston Globe reported that Law, during his first year in Boston in 1984, assigned Geoghan to St. Julia's Parish in Weston, even though Geoghan had been removed from his two prior parishes for allegedly molesting children.
Law and five other bishops who supervised Geoghan have been accused of negligence in many of the civil suits for allegedly knowing of abuse and doing nothing to stop it.
The charge against Geoghan carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.
Geoghan has been free on personal recognizance. In a second criminal trial, scheduled to start next month in Suffolk County, Geoghan faces charges of sexual assaulting two children.
His lawyer, Geoffrey Packard, did not return a call seeking comment.
