Vt. jury ponders suit by former altar boy

BURLINGTON - Calling it the Diocese of Burlington's "day of reckoning," a lawyer for a former Vermont altar boy asked a jury yesterday to award up to $14 million in damages in a priest sex abuse case, telling jurors to punish the church for hiring and protecting a pedophile priest.

A church lawyer, meanwhile, called Bishop John Marshall, the former head of the diocese, "well meaning but ill advised." He urged the panel to be fair in assessing blame for the actions of the Rev. Edward Paquette, whom Marshall hired.

"This wasn't an errant priest," said John Evers, a lawyer for the plaintiff. "This wasn't just a bad apple. The folks in charge of the apple tree weren't paying attention."

Jurors in Chittenden County Superior Court deliberated for more than five hours without reaching a verdict and were sent home for the evening, to resume today. The plaintiff, a 40-year-old Waitsfield man, said Paquette sexually abused him when he was a fourth-grade altar boy at Christ the King Church in Burlington in 1977 and 1978.

He is one of more than a dozen people to file suit against the Vermont church over the actions of Paquette, 79, who is now retired and living in Westfield, Mass., but is not named as a defendant in the case. In May, a jury hearing a similar case brought by another ex-altar boy won an $8.7 million verdict in his lawsuit accusing the church of negligent supervision.

The man in the present case sued the church in 2005, saying he was molested by Paquette between 20 and 50 times while serving as an altar boy with Paquette.

The crux of his case is that Paquette had a history of child molestation allegations - and that diocese officials knew it - but that he was hired anyway in 1972 before going on to victimize other children in parishes in Rutland, Montpelier, and Burlington.