Eighty year old Henry Coffey is citing recovered repressed memories in his claim that sisters who ran the orphanage where he stayed molested and beat him as a boy in the early 1940s. Coffey's is sex-abuse claims will be hard to prove in court - the nuns are deceased, for one thing - but Coffey and another former orphanage resident, Frank Fioretti, 81, recently cleared a legal hurdle when a Superior Court judge in Essex County denied a motion to dismiss their 2005 suit, the Star-Ledger reports.
That motion had been brought by the Pallotine Sisters, the religious order now based in Harriman, N.Y., that ran the boys orphanage until it closed in the 1950s.
"I remember everything," Coffey said in an interview during which he recounted allegations that a nun and he had repeated sexual encounters in her room during his seventh-grade year, and intercourse at a bungalow in Harriman during the summer. "I always seemed to have a good memory."
Stressing the passage of time since the alleged abuse, the Pallatines' attorneys noted in court papers that when the plaintiffs lived at the orphanage, from 1937 to 1943, "Franklin D. Roosevelt was the president of the United States, Winston Churchill was the British prime minister, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and James Cagney won the 1942 Academy Award for best actor for his role in the classic movie ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy.'"
The Pallatines' lawyer, in pressing for dismissal, argued that statutes of limitations were in effect, that the plaintiffs' delays in suing make the case virtually impossible to defend, and that Coffey tried to unfairly influence the testimony of another former orphanage resident.
The lawyer, Anthony Dougherty, did not return calls seeking comment.
The plaintiffs, charging negligence, are asking for compensatory and punitive damages.
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