The Roman Catholic Church in the State of Hawaii has settled four civil lawsuits alleging a defrocked Big Island priest sexually molested teenage boys decades ago, according to court records.
The final case to be settled was that of a plaintiff identified only as “John Roe 128.”
The lawsuit, which was filed in Honolulu Circuit Court on April 16, 2020, was settled, according to attorney Mark Gallagher, who represented the plaintiffs in all four lawsuits in which the retired Hilo clergyman was a defendant.
“DeCosta has not contributed to a settlement in any of the cases,” Gallagher told the Tribune-Herald last week. “The cases have all been settled through payments by the diocese, or on behalf of the diocese by its insurers. With respect to DeCosta, they were dismissed. There was no settlement agreement with him. He’s viewed as somebody who doesn’t have the ability to pay in terms of a civil settlement.”
Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.
Gallagher said the dismissal in regard to DeCosta is not an exoneration of the former priest, who’s now in his 80s. Civil cases routinely are dismissed with prejudice once a settlement has been reached, meaning the lawsuits can’t be refiled.
John Roe 128 was an altar boy at both Malia Puka O Kalani Church in Keaukaha and St. Joseph’s Church in Hilo between 1982 and 1988, according to the complaint in his case.
The lawsuit states that DeCosta, who was a parish priest at the time, “intentionally touched and manipulated the body and/or genitals of (the) plaintiff in a sexual manner and/or caused (the) plaintiff to touch or manipulate defendant DeCosta’s body in a sexual manner.”
In a pretrial statement filed in the case, DeCosta denied John Roe 128’s allegations.
The first civil lawsuit that named DeCosta as a defendant was filed in 2013 by John Roes 6 and 7. The two plaintiffs said the alleged abuse took place in the 1960s when they were students at Damien Memorial School in Honolulu and DeCosta was the school chaplain.
Two separate lawsuits naming DeCosta as a defendant were filed in 2016 by John Roes 49 and 55.
Roe 49 alleged DeCosta abused the plaintiff in 1983, when the claimant was about 16 and a student and parishioner at St. Joseph’s School and Parish in Hilo.
Roe 55 stated the alleged abuse took place in 1965 when the plaintiff was 15 and a student at St. Stephen’s Seminary on Oahu.
All the cases alleged DeCosta made unwelcome contact with the minors’ genitals and he forced them to reciprocate. The suits accused DeCosta of abusing his power, authority and influence as a clergyman. The filings also allege the diocese knew or should have known DeCosta was a pedophile and failed to protect the minors.
The final filings in Roe 49’s case were in 2019, while Roe 55 has no filings since 2017, according to court records.
The Hawaii Catholic Herald reported on Aug. 31, 2020, that DeCosta, who was ordained in 1964 and retired in 2002, was laicized by Pope Francis on July 29, 2020.
The article in the Diocese of Honolulu newspaper said Bishop Larry Silva permanently restricted DeCosta “from all sacred ministry” in 2009, when an allegation of sexual abuse of a minor was made against DeCosta.
After his laicization by the pope, De Costa “is no longer a member of the clergy and may not function as such anywhere in the world,” according to the Hawaii Catholic Herald.
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.