Ex-priest worked for county until named in sex abuse report

Associated Press
February 25, 2019

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A Pennsylvania county says it fired a former Roman Catholic priest from a job working with people who have mental disabilities shortly after his name appeared in a grand jury report into child sexual abuse

A Pennsylvania county government disclosed it fired a former Roman Catholic priest from a job working with people who have mental disabilities shortly after his name appeared in a grand jury report into child sexual abuse .

York County officials told the York Daily Record/Sunday News they had not been aware of allegations against David H. Luck before the August publication of the grand jury report that included information about him.

Luck was suspended from serving as a priest in the Harrisburg diocese in 1990. He was subsequently hired as a caseworker in the mental health and intellectual and developmental disabilities section of the York County Human Services Department.

County officials said Monday that 1994 and 2015 background checks on Luck yielded nothing.

Luck declined comment to the newspaper and did not return a phone message from the AP left at a York phone number linked to him.

The grand jury report cited secret diocesan archives that said Luck, who became a priest in 1987, was accused by a family in 1988 of raping a 15-year-old boy and fondling an 11-year-old boy.

The report alleged that Luck told church officials he was a pedophile in 1990, the year he was suspended from priestly duties.

The grand jury report said no one from the Harrisburg diocese alerted police. Luck was not charged criminally.

Luck, now 58, was a deacon at a parish in Annville before serving as a priest at a parish in Mechanicsburg.

After years of appeals within the church, Luck was defrocked in 2005.

A York County spokesman said Luck lost his county job through an "involuntary separation" about a month after the grand jury report was issued.

The spokesman said Luck's termination is the subject of a pending union grievance.