With Child Victims Act on the line, Baltimore man alleges sex abuse by St. Mary’s seminarian: ‘He was like, untouchable’

[Pelican Press 0]

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With Child Victims Act on the line, Baltimore man alleges **** ****** by St. Mary’s seminarian: ‘He was like, untouchable’

Thomas Finnerty remembers, as a child, when a police officer pulled over the car he was riding in on Saint Paul Street.

After the driver handed over an identification showing that he was a ********* priest, the officer let the car go, Finnerty, 61, recalled in an interview with The Baltimore Sun. What the priest said to him next still haunts Finnerty decades later.

“He’s like, ‘All I have to do is let them know I’m a priest and I can do whatever I want,’” Finnerty recalled. “He was like, untouchable. For the only reason: Because he had a collar.”

Finnerty’s Irish ********* parents had arranged for John Banko, who was studying to become a priest at St. Mary’s Seminary and University, to provide the 8-year-old with a religious education. Instead of tutoring Finnerty, Banko ********* abused him for about seven years, beginning around 1970, a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Baltimore Circuit Court alleges.

Finnerty wasn’t just born into a family of devout ********** in North Baltimore who raised him to believe priests and seminarians were holy figures. His father,

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, represented the Archdiocese of Baltimore through his work as an attorney for the firm now called Gallagher, Evelius & Jones — legal counsel to the ******* and archbishop for decades.

All of this led a young Finnerty to believe that he, not Banko, was in the wrong.

“I mean, **** was saying it was OK. … So, if I feel like it’s not OK, then something’s wrong with me, right?” Finnerty said in an interview at the downtown office of his attorneys, Michael Belsky and Catherine Dickinson.

It took decades — and overcoming substance use disorder — for Finnerty to fully face the ****** he endured as a child. Still, he wasn’t ready to confront his abuser or the institutions that enabled his torment at first. It was when his own sons began approaching the age at which he was molested that Finnerty felt compelled to act.

In the early 2000s, Finnerty reported Banko to the Archdiocese of Baltimore and subsequently testified against him in a ********* case against the priest in New Jersey.

But he had no legal recourse himself. The statute of limitations for him to sue Banko, the ******* and seminary — as well as the separate religious order that runs it — had expired.

Finnerty is making his story public to bring attention to the law that allowed him to file suit many decades later,

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. That law currently hangs in the balance in the face of a constitutional challenge currently before the Supreme Court of Maryland. ***** arguments in that case are set for Sept. 10.

“There might be people that won’t be able to come forward until they’re 80, but it doesn’t make it any less meaningful for them,” Finnerty said. “And if you’re told not to come forward because it won’t do anything because of the statute of limitations, it’s just like basically saying you can ******* little children and get away with it if you can hide it long enough. Is that really what you want to send a message about?”

‘Immediate boundary issues’

Finnerty, who had a learning disability, was the only one of his siblings not to attend ********* school, according to the complaint. Given the importance of religion to his family, his parents approached St. Mary’s for religious tutoring. The seminary set him up with Banko.

A diminutive figure, Banko sported a goatee, wore “a huge amount of cologne” and “immediately had boundary issues,” Finnerty recalled in an interview. “There was never a time where I felt comfortable around him.”

And the tutoring never happened, Finnerty said. “I mean, I didn’t even know the Hail Mary.”

Instead, the complaint says, Banko abused Finnerty in the seminary’s parking lot and in his private room in the seminary at the corner of Northern Parkway and Roland Avenue, where “he was permitted to bring a young boy unsupervised several times per week.” There was no question that adults around them knew what was going on wasn’t right, Finnerty told the Sun. But nobody intervened.

“You know how, like, you’re in a hospital or an accident and you look at someone that you know is in bad shape, and you kind of give them that look, that pity look? That’s the looks that I remember,” Finnerty said.

Banko’s ****** spanned from the early 1970s to 1980, a ******* when priests at St. Mary’s Seminary were “engaging in rampant ******* activity within the seminary building,” the complaint said.

The lawsuit targets St. Mary’s Seminary and University and the religious order that runs it, the Baltimore-based Associated Sulpicians of the ******* States. It does not name the archdiocese. That’s because the archdiocese, anticipating a deluge of lawsuits under the Child Victims Act, declared bankruptcy two days before the law took effect Oct. 1.

St. Mary’s Seminary and the Sulpicians did not respond immediately to separate requests for comment Wednesday afternoon.

The archdiocese’s decision meant allegations slated to make up lawsuits against the ******* in state court had to be repurposed into proof-of-claim forms in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court. Finnerty filed a claim in the *******’s bankruptcy case, but is still allowed to pursue separate civil actions against the St. Mary’s and Sulpicians, his attorneys said.

A wrongful ****** lawsuit filed last year

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, alleging the son of a partner in the same Gallagher, Evelius & Jones firm was ********* abused at age 14 by a seminarian. It argues that ****** and subsequent trauma drove Frank Gallagher Jr. to an early ****** — a fatal overdose — in 2022.

Some of Finnerty’s suit pulls from the

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within the Baltimore diocese, which names Banko, who ***** in 2016. Released last year, the report describes Finnerty’s complaint to the Archdiocese, as well as an earlier one about ******* advances Banko made toward a teenager in roughly 1972.

In an internal email quoted in the report, a ******* official described Banko’s file, along with four others, as the “bad boy” files — priests who’d committed ****** while seminarians. Each of the five, according to the report, was at St. Mary’s Seminary at some point in the 1970s.

In addition to complaints made to ******* leaders, Banko faced two ********* cases in New Jersey. In both, he was convicted of ******* ******** against minors at the same *******. Finnerty testified against Banko in at least one of the trials.

During the second, a court-ordered evaluation found Banko to be a “repetitive and compulsive” **** offender, the attorney general report said.

‘They knew it was wrong’

As a child, Finnerty said, he believed Banko’s behavior was condoned by ******* leaders. They were priests, he said, and people with positions of great authority in his life.

“I couldn’t trust anybody. Who was I going to tell?” he said. “I mean, how could I possibly tell someone?”

The ****** by Banko continued until Finnerty was 15 years old, and physically large enough to threaten Banko, he said. He told Banko if he touched him again, he would hurt him. That, Finnerty said decades later, was the “only thing that made him stop.”

“I couldn’t do that until I was physically big enough to do that. And no one else did that for me. Nobody at the *******, nobody at the seminary,” he said. “And they knew it was wrong.”

Even though he confronted his abuser at 15, it took Finnerty decades to come forward to authorities, underscoring the merits of the Child Victims Act, his attorneys say.

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from institutions like the Archdiocese of Washington, headquartered in Maryland, and the Key School in Annapolis — both of which have been targeted with several complaints under the law — contend that the law is unconstitutional.

Lawyers for the likes of the Washington diocese and Key School say that lawmakers granted institutions like theirs immunity from **** ****** lawsuits after a victim turned 38, when the legislature in 2017 expanded to a victim’s 38th birthday the ******* in which they could sue. They contend lawmakers can’t take away what they describe as a “vested right.”

Attorneys for the people suing those institutions disagree. They say lawmakers never intended to, or did, create immunity for child abusers and that the legislature can change the time ******* for people to sue at any time. Several

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— and subsequent Child Victims Act — filed a brief saying they supported the plaintiffs position.

Dickinson, one of Finnerty’s attorneys, emphasized that children face added obstacles to identifying and reporting ******, a part of what she said makes the child victims’ law crucial. Her firm is looking for potential witnesses or other victims of ****** from St. Mary’s Seminary.

“When you’re a ****, you defer to adults. You especially defer to adults in power, and the Child Victims Act recognizes that,” Dickinson said. “If nobody in the room is saying anything, and you’re six years old, you think that you’re in the wrong. ‘Maybe I’m in the wrong that I think this is not a good touching, that this is not comfortable for me.’”

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#Child #Victims #Act #line #Baltimore #man #alleges #**** #****** #Marys #seminarian #untouchable

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