Friday, February 20, 2004

Not long after Bishop Thomas L. Dupre stood in a Greenfield church last month, denouncing gay marriage, a young man who says Dupre had sex with him when he was a 12-year-old sat 3,000 miles away, in California, reading a newspaper account of Dupre's sermon, speechless over what he considered unspeakable arrogance and hypocrisy.

According to the man's lawyer, it was Dupre's outspoken opposition to gay marriage that triggered the resolve to hold Dupre accountable for the alleged abuse.

Dupre, who abruptly resigned last week as bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Springfield, may have unwittingly unleashed the forces that led the California man and a Massachusetts man to come forward with allegations against him and could lead to him becoming the first American bishop to be prosecuted on charges of sexually abusing minors.

2:37 PM |