Two new lawsuits accuse three Jesuit priests at the Immaculate Conception Church in Albuquerque of sexual abuse.
In one of the cases, a 25-year-old alleged victim claims that he was sexually abused eight years ago at the Immaculate Conception Church in Albuquerque.
John Doe 124 was permitted to perform community service on the Immaculate Conception church premises when he was 17. His family approved of him being sent to Immaculate Conception Parish by the Nex Mexico state probation system.
Once there, he was to do, “-community service, trusting that the defendants could keep Plaintiff safe from harm caused by sexual predation.”
However, the lawsuit accuses the parish and the Jesuits for letting the Rev. J.Patrick Hough “have unsupervised access to the (boy) through his status as staff and priest.”
The lawsuit claims that the Jesuits and the parish knew Hough was professionally interested in teenage boys and knew that the priest had “gone to the juvenile detention facility to volunteer his ‘assistance’ in the cases of teenage boys like Plaintiff.” The lawsuit suggests that the priest’s “professional” interest in the boys was inappropriate and nefarious in intent.
In the second lawsuit, a woman alleges she was molested by two Jesuit priests from Immaculate Conception Church beginning in 1968. She says that both priests sometimes abused her at the same time and forced her to drink large amounts of alcohol beforehand.
Attorney Brad Hall said that clergy abuse cases are continuing to surface involving priests in religious orders.
“The community at large should know that the priest abuse crisis in our state is not over,” he said.
“Our John Doe is the youngest plaintiff we’ve had,” Hall added. “He’s still a young man.”
According to social scientists, victims of clergy sexual abuse may take several decades to come forward.
The Lawsuit filed by Jane Doe P. claims that she went to an elementary school next to the church at Copper and Sixth. She says that the priests sometimes summoned her from school or pulled her aside during various breaks to “bring her to secluded areas of the parish where they would sexually abuse her.”
The suit also claims that the priests took the girl to a mountain cabin and sexually assaulted her.
“Upon information and belief, this cabin in the mountains was owned by (the Jesuits and/or the parish),” the lawsuit says.
For information about personal injury claims, visit Cohen & Cohen.
