Church memo on priest at center of appeal

PORTLAND – A memo from a Roman Catholic Church official acknowledging concerns about a priest who later was accused of sexually abusing a teenager is at the center of an appeal pending before the Maine Supreme Judicial Court.

Michael Fortin of Sidney sued the Rev. Raymond Melville and the church in 2000, claiming that Melville, a priest assigned to St. Mary’s Church in Augusta, sexually abused him for seven years, beginning in 1985 when Fortin was 13.

A Superior Court judge this year ordered Melville to pay Fortin $500,000, but the case against the church was dismissed because of a precedent set in a 1997 case known as Swanson v. Roman Catholic Bishop of Portland.

In that case, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court said the supervisory relationship between a bishop and priest is protected from legal scrutiny by the constitutional guarantee of free exercise of religion.

Fortin is appealing the dismissal of his lawsuit against the church to the supreme court. The centerpiece of the appeal is a memo in which church officials wrote that they kept their concerns about Melville quiet for fear of “liability and … scandal,” according to records recently uncovered in the lawsuit.

If the appeal is successful, it could open Maine’s religious institutions to lawsuits from victims in sex abuse cases.

The church is scheduled to respond to the appeal next month, and both sides could argue their positions before the court in the fall. A lawyer representing the church and the spokeswoman for the diocese declined comment on the case.

The memo in question was written in response to a letter in 1990 from a man in Baltimore to Bishop Joseph Gerry. The man informed Gerry that Melville had abused him “emotionally, sexually and physically,” when Melville had been a seminary student during the 1980s.

“The possible tragedy of another young boy being a victim compels me to write this letter,” wrote the man, whose name has been concealed in court records.

Gerry wrote back on March 19, 1990, promising to “address the matter vigorously and expeditiously.”

But before that letter was sent, a memo dated March 18 was sent from Monsignor Joseph Ford to Auxiliary Bishop Amadee W. Proulx. The memo suggests that the letter avoid references to earlier complaints about Melville.

“While we did not have any substantive or factual allegations of improper conduct, we did have serious concerns about his conduct placed before us, i.e. those of Msgr. Fitz sometime ago and the complaint last Fall,” the memo reads. “There could be liability and at least scandal if those concerns were presented. The letter of [name redacted] confirms the validity of the concerns.”

The documents do not explain the nature of the concerns or the complaint referred to in the memo. No other draft of the letter was turned over in the lawsuit.

According to court records, Melville went to a Minnesota treatment facility that spring. He returned to Maine in August and was reassigned to St. Joseph’s Church in Lewiston. In 1992 we was transferred to Holy Name Church in Machias before leaving the active priesthood in 1997.

Church officials say they did not know about Fortin’s claim until he filed his suit in 2000. But in his brief to the supreme court, Fortin’s attorney, Sumner Lipman, said some of Fortin’s abuse could have been stopped if Gerry had removed Melville from the ministry and informed the people in his parishes about the charges in 1990.