In a 1995 lawsuit against Father Kownacki, one of the ousted priests, and the diocese, Gina Trimble Parks asserted that while she was the priest's teenage housekeeper, the priest repeatedly raped her over two years and ultimately fed her a quinine potion to bring about an abortion.

In 1991, with Father Burns now in his second Boston parish, the archdiocese received a detailed complaint that the priest had repeatedly raped and molested a boy.

Several middle-aged men-including two who were fathered by Father Maciel under an assumed identity-have come forward to testify that the Mexican priest molested or raped them.

On 23 May that year RTÉ aired a programme called Mission to Prey, which falsely claimed that the priest had raped a woman and fathered her child while working as a missionary in Kenya.

In an interview yesterday, Martha Coakley, the Middlesex County district attorney said that Father Gale's accuser is a 32-year-old man who said the priest raped him about twice a month from the time he was 10 until he was 14.

Ms. Tucker said a priest had raped her four decades earlier as the two drove home amid Suffolk County potato fields.

Ms. Burns is the sister of Frank Fitzpatrick, a private detective who first brought Father Porter's case to public light after he began to recall how the priest had raped him as an altar boy in North Attleboro three decades ago.

Some come with poetry they have written or pictures they have drawn to capture the pain and stabbing sense of betrayal they felt when a priest they respected raped them.

Emma Daly (NYT) FRANCE: BISHOP ARRESTED Bishop Pierre Pican of Bayeux has been charged with concealing the fact that a priest had been raping young boys, news agencies quoted justice officials as saying.

Mr. Cebekhulu said Mrs. Madikizela-Mandela had asked him to say the priest had raped him.