There are so many things wrong with this story from my own neighborhood (I live in Incarnation Parish, but I am not a member of it) that I don't know where to begin.
I guess I could start with something that makes me feel a little bit guilty because it feels, to me, too close to "blaming the victim." Close, not exactly; the victim is a 4-year-old girl, and it's not her I wish to blame.
It goes like this:
Let me get this straight…
You are a mother raising a 4-year-old daughter.
You are a parishioner at a Catholic church.
When a personable, 41-year-old priest from another country comes to your parish for a 5-year tour, you decide it would be a great idea to have an affair with him.
Not only that, it would be a great idea to have him move in with you and your little girl. (Because we all know what a great idea it is, if you're raising a small child, to have a live-in boyfriend.)
At some point later, you call the archdiocese to tell them that the priest has been molesting the little girl. (They call police, who begin an investigation.)
Not long after that, you sue the archdiocese, in part because the archdiocese "should have known" that the priest had moved in with you and wasn't "keeping track of his activities."
I don't know. Maybe suing the archdiocese is always appropriate if it's proved that a priest under its authority, even temporarily as in the case here, has harmed someone.
But I can't help but think that if the foreign priest's mistress says the archdiocese should have known, perhaps that mistress should have mentioned it to them before he (allegedly) molested her daughter.
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