Philly archdiocese accused of covering up sex abuse complaints against priest who allegedly found a new victim in Nashville

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia is facing new accusations that it covered up sexual misconduct, this time involving a former priest who allegedly forced himself on multiple women and told them the unwanted encounters were “special trials” ordained by God.

In court filings this week, a 27-year-old woman said church officials’ failure to disclose previous complaints against the Rev. Kevin Barry McGoldrick enabled abuse she endured after he was transferred from Philadelphia to Nashville in 2013.

Even after the Philadelphia archdiocese had substantiated her claims that McGoldrick had plied her with bourbon and then sexually assaulted her while he was serving as a college chaplain in Tennessee, she said, church officials here still refused to acknowledge they’d received reports years earlier of his involvement in similar misconduct.

The woman, now living in Virginia and identified in court filings only as Jane Doe, made those accusations in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that seeks hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages from church officials and McGoldrick himself in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas.

Her legal action follows dozens of similar suits against the archdiocese in recent years alleging abuse by clergy and cover-up by the officials overseeing them.

Many of those claims have involved decades-old abuse and have been thrown out of court for falling outside state time limits on when a civil suit can be brought. But the lawsuit filed Monday is notable not only for the recency of the misconduct it alleges but also for the church officials it accuses of turning a blind eye.

Lawyers for the accuser say former Philadelphia Archbishop Charles J. Chaput failed to disclose earlier investigations into McGoldrick and signed off on his transfer to Nashville in 2013. That move came two years after Pope Benedict XVI had tapped Chaput to take over the Philadelphia archdiocese and oversee reform efforts after a series of damning grand jury investigations highlighted its failures in handling clergy sex abuse complaints.

“The archdiocese’s knowing acquiescence and silence with respect to the known … activities of pedophiles, sexual predators, child molesters, and … mentally ill individuals constituted a course of conduct through which acts of sexual perversion and the violation of young female adults [was] condoned,” attorneys Brian D. Kent, M. Stewart Ryan and Alexandria MacMaster wrote in the woman’s court filing.

A spokesperson for the archdiocese and its current archbishop, Nelson J. Pérez, declined to comment on the suit.

Efforts to reach McGoldrick, who has since volunteered to leave the priesthood and is married to a former employee of the Nashville diocese, were unsuccessful Thursday.

Ordained in 2003, McGoldrick, 48, served as a pastor and minister at several Philadelphia-area parishes including Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Port Richmond, St. Timothy in Northeast Philadelphia, Our Lady of Mount Carmel and St. Monica in South Philadelphia, Holy Name of Jesus in Fishtown and Roman Catholic High School — before his transfer to Nashville to become chaplain at Aquinas College.

According to the lawsuit, even during his time in Philadelphia, McGoldrick had developed a reputation among parishioners and his fellow priests for his frequent socializing with younger women he’d met through the course of his work.

Like many whose paths led them to Nashville, he arrived with dreams of music stardom. While there, he cut an album and toured, performing at Christian music concerts as well as the 2015 World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia. He talked theology over drinks in a YouTube channel he created and dubbed “Whiskey Couch.”

It was during that same period, McGoldrick’s accuser says, that she fell victim to his advances.

According to the woman’s account, he began inviting her and others to his quarters during her junior year at Aquinas for dinner and drinks. During one such visit in 2017, she said, he began touching her inappropriately and plied her with bourbon to the point that she blacked out.

Though the woman acknowledges in her lawsuit that she doesn’t remember what happened, she believes she was sexually assaulted. The next day, she says in the suit, McGoldrick begged her not to tell anyone and continued to pursue her despite her efforts to put distance between them.

The woman says she reported the incident to the Diocese of Nashville in early 2019, but it was not until she filed a police report, sued the Nashville diocese and alerted the Philadelphia archdiocese to her claims against McGoldrick that church officials began to take note.

In January 2020, a church investigation in Philadelphia substantiated her claims. And within months, the diocese of Nashville settled her suit for $65,000.

Still, officials there maintained that they were unaware of any previous complaints against McGoldrick before he was transferred to Aquinas in 2013. In fact, a spokesperson told Philadelphia-area watchdog group Catholics4Change that McGoldrick’s superiors in Philadelphia had sent a letter describing him as a priest in good standing — standard practice when clergy members transfer between dioceses.

McGoldrick’s accuser also says in court filings that even after the Philadelphia archdiocese substantiated her allegations and McGoldrick began the process of laicization, church officials avoided her repeated questions over whether they’d received any earlier abuse complaints involving the priest.

She was shocked, she says, to learn last year while reading an article online that at least two other women had filed complaints against McGoldrick in 2013 and that the archdiocese had investigated those allegations.

It remains unclear what that earlier church investigation uncovered. According to the suit, it involved allegations from one woman who said McGoldrick insisted on serving as her “spiritual director,” invited her on religious pilgrimages to Europe, persuaded her to move to an apartment near him, and eventually raped her.

Another woman — a former church employee — asserted that McGoldrick sexually harassed her in 2012 and would book them couples massages, saying they needed a break from their “messed up parish,” according to the lawsuit. She eventually moved away from her parish and friends to escape his attentions, it said.

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia never disclosed either the existence or the results of that probe. Had they, the Virginia accuser says, she might have been spared the abuse she says she endured.

“If there was ever a case of reckless disregard for the safety of the public and parishioners,” said her attorneys, “it’s this one.”

Neither McGoldrick nor the archdiocese has officially responded to the lawsuit’s claims in court.