A woman is suing the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, a Delaware-based Catholic order, for sexual abuse she says she suffered as a child at the hands of a priest on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
Joyce Harper, 74, who now lives in Florida, alleges in a lawsuit filed Wednesday that deceased Oblate priest George Mahoney sexually abused her and another girl after Mass at Our Mother of Sorrows Church. in Centerville more than 60 years ago.
In 1960, Mahoney invited Harper, who was 10, and three other girls to help him count Sunday offering money, the complaint says. Mahoney allegedly took Harper and another girl to her room in the church rectory and sexually assaulted them, one at a time. According to the lawsuit, Mahoney told the girls, “If you tell anyone about this, you’re going to HELL.”
The Baltimore Sun does not name victims of sexual abuse without their consent.
“To this day I have flashbacks of the abuse I suffered, and especially when I see a little girl,” Harper said in a statement, adding that she lost faith. “After I grew up and left the East Coast, I never went to church alone. “She could not bear the mere sight of a priest and every time she did so she had immediate memories of the evil endured.”
Filed in Delaware Superior Court, Harper’s lawsuit cites the Maryland Child Victims Act as legal authority.
Her attorney, Thomas Neuberger, described Harper as relieved to be able to pursue civil action because of Maryland law, given that she did not file suit when Delaware in 2007 passed a two-year period allowing civil lawsuits alleging decades-old sexual abuse. antiquity. . He said she can sue in Delaware under “foreign law” because the Oblates are incorporated there.
The Diocese of Wilmington filed for bankruptcy in 2009, completing the case years later with a $77 million settlement for survivors and protection against future sexual abuse lawsuits.
The Oblates joined the diocese’s bankruptcy case, but were not protected from future lawsuits, said Neuberger, who represented most of the survivors in that case.
Harper had no legal recourse until Maryland enacted its Child Victims Act in 2023. The law, which went into effect Oct. 1, removed time limits for people who were sexually abused as children to sue perpetrators. and to the institutions that allowed their torment.
“She was permanently injured,” Neuberger said. “She lived her entire life with this hanging over her head. The opportunity to get justice is an answered prayer for her.”
Describing Mahoney as a serial child abuser, Harper’s lawsuit goes on to accuse Wilmington Diocese officials of helping to cover up his actions, including Harper’s abuse when she reported Mahoney to a Catholic priest who, without her knew it, he also abused children. The complaint alleges negligence, assault and battery, and fraud, among other claims.
Neither the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales nor a spokesperson for the Diocese of Wilmington responded to messages Wednesday seeking comment.
The Maryland attorney general’s office, which released a report last year detailing decades of sexual abuse perpetrated by priests and others employed by the Archdiocese of Baltimore, has pledged to continue investigating the scourge of clergy abuse in the diocese of Baltimore. Wilmington, which covers eastern Maryland. Shore and Washington, DC, whose headquarters are located in Prince George’s County.
It’s unclear what will happen to Harper’s lawsuit in Delaware while the Child Victims Act faces numerous challenges in Maryland.
The Maryland Supreme Court, the state’s highest court, is scheduled to hear several appeals challenging the constitutionality of the law.
The high court accepted a question from a federal judge presiding over a lawsuit brought under the Child Victims Act and agreed to hear appeals from state lawsuits citing the law in Harford and Prince George’s counties.
Faced with arguments challenging the Child Victims Act, Harford and Prince George’s County Circuit Court judges declared the law constitutional. However, a Montgomery County Circuit Court judge found the law unconstitutional.
Oral arguments in the case sent by the federal judge are set for September, with several prior legal briefs.
Neuberger said the Delaware Supreme Court held that the two-year look-back window for child sexual abuse lawsuits was constitutional.
Legal challenges to the Child Victims Act in Maryland go hand in hand with the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s bankruptcy case. Citing the potential for hundreds of lawsuits, the diocese, the oldest in the United States, filed for bankruptcy two days before the law took effect. The deadline for survivors to file their cases passed and hundreds of people filed their cases. The church and survivors have asked to enter mediation over the summer while the exact number of claims is counted.
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