Sexual abuse added to child porn allegations against former Bishop Lahey

Former prominent Canadian Bishop Raymond Lahey, who last August brokered a $15-million settlement for victims of sexual abuse by priests of the diocese of Antigonish in Nova Scotia and who was already facing child porn charges, is being accused in a civil lawsuit of sexual abuse by a former resident of the infamous Mount Cashel Orphanage in St. John's.

Lahey was arrested in September for possessing and importing child pornography. At the time, Ronald Martin, who launched a class-action lawsuit on behalf of himself and others who were sexually abused by priests in the Roman Catholic diocese of Antigonish and who saw Lahey frequently while negotiating the settlement, said the incident “was the ultimate revictimization for every single one of us.”

Lawyer John McKiggan explains that a core goal of the Antigonish settlement was to compensate abuse survivors while avoiding the revictimization which inevitably occurs in a public trial.

The Roman Catholic Church in Canada sought last year to minimize the issue, but Halifax Archbishop Anthony Mancini has set a somewhat different tone, saying last week:

We have been hit by a violent wind of protest and criticism, and not without cause.

The most recent claim against Lahey involves abuse which is alleged to have occurred in the early 1980s, "before Lahey rose through the ranks in the Roman Catholic Church, eventually becoming a bishop," CBC reported.

[H/T: Andrew Sullivan]