Monsignor Defrocked In NYC Sex Abuse Scandal
NEW YORK (AP) -- A Roman Catholic tribunal has defrocked a monsignor who once led fundraising for the Archdiocese of New York after deciding he had molested a teenage student in the 1980s.
The panel's action against Monsignor Charles Kavanagh came eight years after a middle-aged man came forward and claimed that the clergyman had touched him in appropriately and climbed into his bed during a trip to Washington D.C. Kavanagh insists he didn't do it.
His sister and lawyer, Ann Mandt, says the church's decision was an attempt to cover up its mishandling of other sex abuse cases by cracking down on an innocent man.
She says her 73-year-old brother "will never give up his fight for justice."
Kavanagh had been the archdiocese's vicar of development in the 1990s.
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