BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe
By Kathleen Burge, Globe Staff, 12/18/2002
lawyer for Monsignor Frederick J. Ryan, accused of sexually assaulting a high school student in the 1980s, asked a judge yesterday to throw out the civil lawsuit against him, arguing the alleged victim waited too long to go to court.
David E. Carney sued Ryan and the Boston Archdiocese in April, alleging that the archdiocese’s former vice chancellor sexually assaulted him when Carney was a student at Catholic Memorial High School in West Roxbury. But yesterday, Ryan’s lawyer argued that the statute of limitations expired in April 1987, three years after Carney turned 18.
The statute of limitations can be extended under certain circumstances, such as when an alleged victim has repressed the memory of the abuse and later recalls it. But that didn’t happen in Carney’s case, argued Ryan’s lawyer, Timothy O’Neill. ”He always knew he was abused,” O’Neill argued before Superior Court Judge Constance M. Sweeney. ”He knew the details of the abuse.”
