Bishops sued for slander
Bishop Donald Trautman |
|
By Ed Palattella |
Three women who spoke out against the Catholic Diocese of Erie are now speaking up in court.
They are suing the diocese, Bishop Donald W. Trautman and retired Bishop Michael J. Murphy on claims of defamation.
The women say the bishops slandered or libeled them a year ago in public statements that Trautman and Murphy made about the women’s concerns in the case of a former diocesan priest, Robert F. Bower.
Bower resigned from the priesthood a year ago over his arrest in 1999 on felony charges that he possessed child pornography on his personal computer.
The women came forward in an Erie Times-News article April 17, 2002, to say that they had tried to raise concerns about Bower long before his arrest. They said they met with Murphy in 1982, and that he did nothing to discipline Bower.
The women’s suit, filed Wednesday, marks the first time that someone has sued the 13-county Catholic Diocese of Erie in connection with the sex-abuse scandal that started rocking the Roman Catholic Church nationwide more than a year ago.
The women’s lawyer said the bishops accused the women of lying. The bishops were responding to comments the women made in the Erie Times-News article, when the women said they met with Murphy 20 years ago to express their concerns about gay pornography that one of the women said she found in Bower’s mail when she was his church secretary.
That woman, Sally Beres, said she was fired as secretary two days after the meeting with Murphy. Beres claims that 20 years later, when she aired her concerns about Bower again, the bishops responded by defaming her and the other two women who came forward, Ann Caro and Helen Rusnak.
The women’s lawyer, Richard A. Peterson of Greenville, said the suit will focus on the written statement Trautman issued April 21 in which he sharply criticized Beres, Rusnak, Caro and the Erie Times-News.