Suit: Priest Sexually Assaulted Girl At Catholic High School
CHICAGO (STMW) - An Arkansas woman claiming she was sexually assaulted at an all-girls Catholic high school in Chicago in the 1970s filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the Archdiocese of Chicago.
The woman, identified only as Jane Doe, claims Father Terence Fitzmaurice sexually assaulted her while she was a student at St. Procopius High School from 1974 to 1978, according to a suit filed in Cook County Circuit Court. The woman is now married and living in Belle Vista, Ark.
St. Procopius was an all-girl Catholic school in Chicago, and Fitzmaurice was a priest and known pedophile who taught at the school, according to the suit. Fitzmaurice is deceased.
During her final year, the teen girl was kidnapped and raped at gunpoint by another male, then brought back to the school, where Fitzmaurice blamed her for the incident and dissuaded her from reporting it to police by threatening to prevent her from graduating high school, according to the suit.
The suit claims The Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago and numerous unnamed people and corporations should have known that Fitzmaurice was a pedophile and sexually abused minors.
The six-count suit claims intentional infliction of emotional distress, breach of fiduciary duty, negligence, fraudulent concealment, battery, and sexual abuse of a child. The woman is seeking more than $1 million in compensatory damages plus punitive damages and attorneys' fees.
A spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Chicago did not immediately return a call for comment.
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