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Judge Upholds Key Elements in Maciel Sex Abuse Case

A state judge has upheld key elements of a lawsuit claiming that for years the Vatican ignored allegations of child sexual abuse by a priest who founded the Legionaries of Christ, a secretive Catholic order based in Connecticut.

The suit is being pressed by Jose Raul Gonzalez Lara, a Mexican who claims that he is the illegitimate son of his abuser, the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado.

In one of the odder twists in the still-emerging story of Maciel, Gonzalez claims that he was one of two children Maciel fathered with a woman in Mexico. Gonzalez said that Maciel was known to his family in Mexico as Raul Rivas and claimed to be a CIA agent and oil executive, Gonzalez has said he did not learn that his father was a priest until 1997, when he was about 17. He said his abuse by Maciel began when he was 7 and continued for nine years. The victim was 30 when he filed the suit in June 2010. Maciel died in 2008.

In the legal decision last week, Superior Court Judge Grant Miller rejected arguments by the Legionaries and its affiliated organizations to dismiss the suit in its entirety.

Miller dismissed counts in the suit that claimed that the Legionaries knew or should have known of Maciel's abuse. But the judge let stand counts in which Gonzalez claims that negligence by the order contributed to his abuse by Maciel.

New Haven lawyer Joel Faxon, who represents Gonzalez, said that he will issue subpoenas for senior Vatican officials in an effort to support the negligence case.

The suit claims that Maciel's sexual abuse of children was widely known in the church for decades, beginning in the 1940s and '50s, but was not stopped.

In 1976 alone, according to the suit, the Legionaries' national director accused Maciel by letter of abusing 20 seminarians, and a U.S. bishop reported Maciel to the Vatican and Pope Paul VI, but no action was taken. Another complaint was made to the Vatican two years later, according to the suit, but there was no response.

Craig Raabe, the lawyer representing the Legionaries, had no immediate response Wednesday to the decision in court. Previously, the Legionaries have declined to discuss the suit.

The Legionaries operate the Legion of Christ College in Cheshire and the Legion of Christ in Hamden.