Mahony, Kelly to testify

National Catholic Reporter, April 16, 2004 by Dennis Coday

WASHINGTON -- Los Angeles Cardinal Roger M. Mahony and Archbishop Thomas C. Kelly of Louisville, Ky., are to give sworn depositions in separate clergy sexual abuse lawsuits.

Mahony has agreed to give a deposition April 22 in a lawsuit alleging childhood molestation in the 1970s by Oliver F. O'Grady, a former priest of the Stockton, Calif., diocese. Mahony was bishop of Stockton from 1980 to 1985. O'Grady spent six years in prison following a 1994 conviction for child molestation. He has been named in several sexual abuse lawsuits against the diocese.

A Kentucky judge ruled April 1 that Kelly has to submit to a deposition by attorneys for Kyle Burden, who accuses Fr. Daniel C. Clark of fondling him in 1982. No date was set for the deposition.

Although the archdiocese has lodged an appeal for dismissal of the case on grounds it was not filed in a timely fashion, the judge ruled that the deposition should go ahead; it will remain sealed until the appeal is decided. Clark, who has been removed from ministry since 1988, is currently in prison for child molestation.