The Modesto Bee (California)
Thursday, Mar. 15, 2012
Bee News Services
STOCKTON — The second-highest ranking official in the Diocese of Stockton took the stand Thursday in the civil trial of the Rev. Michael Kelly of Lockeford’s St. Joachim Catholic Church.
Kelly is accused of child sex abuse in the mid-1980s.
Monsignor Richard Ryan told the jury that he was the official who was notified that Kelly was being accused of sexual abuse by a 37-year-old man.
Kelly’s accuser is a former altar boy who claims to have repressed memories of abuse he suffered at Annunciation School.
Ryan took the stand for roughly two hours Thursday, taking questions from the plaintiff’s attorney.
Kelly has been accused of tickling, roughhousing and swimming with children in the past. Ryan told the jury that such conduct is “inappropriate,” although he said such actions were not necessarily sexual in nature.
The plaintiff alleges Kelly spent time baby-sitting him and his sister in the 1980s. Ryan confirmed testimony that Kelly first said he did not recall baby-sitting, then later testified that he remembered it.
“I simply considered it a memory lapse,” Ryan said.
The majority of questions asked of Ryan were not allowed by Superior Court Judge Bob McNatt because they were focused on action or nonaction taken by the Diocese to prevent sexual abuse by Kelly.
McNatt said the trial has two phases: one to determine Kelly’s actions and the other to determine whether the diocese was aware of sexual misconduct by the priest. Questions of the second phase are not relevant to the first phase, McNatt said.
On Wednesday, the man claimed in previous testimony that he was sexually assaulted and fondled while he was in fifth grade in the 1980s, testified that he wasn’t sure what grade he was in when some of the alleged incidents took place.
The former Stockton altar boy also refuted statements by clinical psychologist Amy Charney, who testified he told her that Kelly sexually assaulted him in fourth grade.
During cross examination, Stockton Diocese attorney Jim Goodman showed videotapes of two depositions the plaintiff gave in 2009 in an effort to show inconsistencies between what the plaintiff said during the depositions and what he said on the witness stand Wednesday and last Friday.
Not every incident may have happened in fifth grade, the plaintiff said Wednesday. Some of the incidents may have taken place as late as seventh or eighth grade.
The plaintiff, whose name is being withheld by court order because he claims to be a sexual assault victim, is suing Kelly and the Stockton Diocese, saying that Kelly sexually assaulted him at least once in the 1980s when the plaintiff was a student at Annunciation School in Stockton.
Kelly, 62, has been pastor of St. Joachim’s Catholic Church in Lockeford for the past eight years.