Former Dodger Accuses Priest of Molestation

Former major league baseball player Tom Paciorek said he and three of his brothers were molested when they were children by a priest who was removed this week from another Michigan church.

The brothers grew up outside Hamtramck on Detroit’s east side and attended Hamtramck St. Ladislaus, where Father Gerald Shirilla was a teacher.

Shirilla was removed Wednesday from St. Mary Catholic Church in Alpena, Mich. He had accepted an assignment there in August without the permission of Cardinal Adam Maida, said Ned McGrath, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Detroit.

The archdiocese apologized Friday to all victims sexually abused by Roman Catholic clergy.

“Words fall woefully short when commenting on stories about the abuse of minor children by clergy,” McGrath said in a prepared statement. “What we can reiterate--on behalf of Cardinal Maida and the Archdiocese of Detroit--is a sincere apology for these grievous acts.”

Shirilla, 63, did not respond to repeated requests for comment. His attorney, Michael Smith, told the Detroit Free Press that the priest has done nothing that would make him unfit for ministry.

Paciorek said he complained about Shirilla to the Detroit Archdiocese in 1993 after another former student filed a lawsuit about the priest.

Shirilla admitted in a deposition that he massaged boys’ chests and stomachs while he or they were in their underwear but denied any sexual contact.

The archdiocese placed Shirilla on administrative leave and barred him from public ministry, but he was never charged and the lawsuit was dismissed in 1999 because the statute of limitations had run out.

Paciorek, 55, said he was surprised when he heard Shirilla had been hired in Alpena.

“I was molested by him for a period of four years,” Paciorek said this week in Kissimmee, Fla., where he is covering the Atlanta Braves training camp for Fox Sports Net. “I would refer to them as attacks. I would say there was at least a hundred of them.”

The former All-Star said he didn’t tell anyone because no one would have believed him.

Paciorek, an outfielder and first baseman who played for six teams, including the Los Angeles Dodgers, from 1970 to 1987, said he still suffers emotionally.

He and his brothers had kept the abuse secret, even from each other, until the early 1980s, when Michael Paciorek, now 47, the fourth of five boys in the family, started making comments about Shirilla.

Bobby Paciorek, now 51, the third of the five brothers, related similar memories of abuse.