A 43-year-old woman has filed suit against the Diocese of Stockton, claiming she was molested by a former Catholic priest defrocked for sexual abuse. The unnamed plaintiff alleges Oliver O'Grady abused her when she was a child attending a Lodi parish in the 1970s, according to the lawsuit filed Oct. 31 in San Joaquin County Superior Court.
O'Grady has admitted to abusing at least 25 children and has cost the diocese millions of dollars in settlements of civil sexual-abuse lawsuits.
A lawyer for the Stockton diocese says three additional suits are pending against the diocese.
O'Grady was deported to his native Ireland in 2001 after serving seven years in California's Mule Creek State Prison for molesting two brothers. A documentary featuring O'Grady, "Deliver Us From Evil," was nominated for a 2007 Academy Award.
According to an article published Dec. 9 in Ireland's Sunday Tribune, however, the former pedophile priest appears to have gone missing.
Attorneys representing two victims who filed civil suits in Ireland claiming O'Grady abused them even before he moved to California cannot locate him to serve him with court papers, according to the article.
O'Grady has moved twice since 2001 and is not listed on that country's sex offenders register, according to the Tribune.
"He's the Hannibal Lecter of the clerical world. He is in the top three most dangerous pedophile priests in the world and needs to be monitored," attorney Patrick Wall, of Manly, McGuire & Stewart in Newport Beach told the newspaper.
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