2 Suits, 6 Priests Add to Child Sex-Abuse Scandal

Two more lawsuits were filed Thursday accusing the Archdiocese of Boston of failing to stop its priests from molesting altar boys even though it knew what was happening.

The new allegations came as the archdiocese, complying with its recent promise to report past accusations, revealed the names of six more priests who have been suspended amid charges they molested children, and forwarded more names of accused priests to prosecutors.

A lawsuit filed in Middlesex Superior Court accused Cardinal Bernard Law personally of failing to protect a 13-year-old boy from abuse by now-defrocked priest John Geoghan in 1989. In the suit, Christopher Fulchino, now 25 and living in Maine, alleges Law knew or should have known about the abuse and instead relied on “a veil of silence.”

Geoghan, who was recently convicted of sexual abuse, faces 80 civil lawsuits and two more criminal cases. In all, 130 people claim he abused them.

Last month, Law apologized for moving Geoghan to a church in Weston, Middlesex County, even though he knew of allegations of abuse against the priest.

Meanwhile, a lawsuit filed in Suffolk Superior Court on behalf of four former altar boys accuses the archdiocese of failing to protect them and accuses the Rev. Paul Desilets of molesting them when he was assigned to Assumption Parish in Bellingham in the mid-1980s.

Earlier this week, two other former altar boys filed a separate lawsuit against Desilets, now 78, with similar allegations.

Bellingham police, who have been investigating the allegations against Desilets for the last two weeks, said they expect the list of people accusing Desilets of abuse to grow to 15 to 20.

Police have not yet interviewed Desilets, who lives in a nursing home in Quebec.

On Wednesday, he told Associated Press the charges against him in the first lawsuit were exaggerated.

The archdiocese is facing other lawsuits by people alleging abuse by Geoghan and the victims of former church worker Christopher Reardon, who was sentenced to 40 to 50 years after pleading guilty last year to molesting 24 boys.

Last month, the archdiocese announced a new policy of reporting even past allegations of abuse by priests after documents in the Geoghan case showed at least some officials knew of the accusations.

In all, the archdiocese had turned over the names of at least 58 priests accused of sexually abusing children over the last 40 years, including 14 names forwarded to prosecutors Thursday. It has not released all the names to the public.