If you or someone you know needs resources or support related to sexual violence, contact the Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault’s 24/7 hotline at 800-871-7741.
Six more people have sued the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, alleging that seven clergy abused them at sites around the state between 1954 and 1988 when they were from about 4 to 14 years old.
Glen Witham, one of the people who filed suit Monday in Cumberland County Superior Court, was 14 years old when claims that the Rev. John E. Harris abused him. Witham lived at the Rumford Boys Home across the street from the St. Athanasius and St. John Parish in Rumford, and the abuse allegedly began in 1984 and lasted until 1987.
Harris was removed from ministry in 2015 based on an allegation of sex abuse of a minor in the early 1980s.
The new lawsuits, from five men and one woman, are the latest allegations made possible by a 2021 change in state law that lifted a statute of limitations on such claims. Previously, state law effectively prevented people who were abused as children before the late 1980s from suing their abusers and the organizations for which they worked.
This brings the total number of cases by Berman & Simmons, the law firm representing the plaintiffs, against the diocese to 30. Other law firms have also filed abuse cases against clergy in Maine.
The Bangor Daily News does not identify victims of sexual abuse unless they agree to be named. Witham and Robert Rossignol, two of the six plaintiffs, agreed to be identified and are expected to speak during a news conference in Portland on Monday morning.
Rossignol, who now lives in Florida, was a 12-year-old altar boy at St. Catherine Church in the Aroostook County town of Washburn from 1968 to 1969. That’s when the Rev. John L. Audibert abused him, and the first time was after mass as Rossignol was tidying up, according to his complaint. The alleged abuse lasted for about a year.
Audibert was removed from ministry in 1994 and sent to a rehabilitation program following allegations that he sexually abused a child, who was not Rossignol, in Caribou in the 1970s. He was reinstated a year later, according to the lawsuit.
In 2002, he publicly admitted to sexually abusing a minor during his assignment to Holy Cross Parish and Church in Lewiston during the late 1980s and early 1990s, the lawsuit said.
Audibert was removed from ministry at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Madawaska in 2002.
The six lawsuits allege abuse at churches and diocesan schools over the course of three decades.
BDN writer Judy Harrison contributed to this report.
