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  Judge Will Consider Reinstating Civil Suit
Abuse: Plaintiff Says Society of Jesus, Diocese Did Not Protect Her

The Associated Press, carried in Anchorage Daily News
April 30, 2006

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/7679685p-7590891c.html

FAIRBANKS -- A judge in Nome has decided he will hear arguments from attorneys in their effort to get the civil case involving allegations of abuse by a priest to go forward.

Superior Court Judge Ben Esch in February dismissed the suit against the Fairbanks Catholic Diocese and the Society of Jesus brought by a woman identified in court documents as Jane Doe 2.

After going over motions filed by the attorneys in the case, Esch now is asking attorneys on both sides to set a date to hear arguments between May 30 and June 16.

"We are all thrilled," said Anchorage attorney Ken Roosa, who with California attorney John Manly represents the plaintiff.

The woman sued the diocese and the Jesuits, alleging that the two institutions were negligent in protecting her when she was a minor from repeated sexual abuse by the Rev. James Poole, a Jesuit priest and founder of Nome radio station KNOM.

Poole was part of the original civil lawsuit, but Esch severed him from the case in December, ruling the woman waited too long to report the alleged sexual abuse.

Ronnie Rosenberg, spokeswoman for the diocese, called the judge's decision "another part of the civil procedure that is provided for in the rules of procedure."

Roosa filed a motion claiming the Jesuits failed to produce thousands of key documents relevant to Poole. The lawyers contended that the ruling to dismiss the case was made with "a false and misleading record before it" and that the Jesuits and their counsel "willfully manipulated" and denied Jane Doe 2 access to thousands and thousands of e-mails, a privileged e-mail log and notebooks used by the Rev. John Whitney, provincial of the Oregon Province of the Society of Jesus.

The woman's lawsuit says Poole abused her repeatedly, impregnated her at age 14, then suggested she have an abortion.

Two other women have settled with the diocese and the Jesuits for claims against Poole. Jane Doe 1, Elsie Boudreau, received about $1 million, and another, Patricia Hess, settled for an undisclosed sum. Two other cases against Poole are pending.

 
 

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