After about five hours of deliberations, the Chittenden County Superior Court jury yesterday returned a verdict calling for $950,000 in compensatory damages and $7.75 million in punitive damages.
The Associated Press does not identify victims of sexual assault without their consent.
The man testified that Paquette, now retired and living in Westfield, Mass., routinely groped him and other altar boys at Christ the King Church in Burlington. He didn't file suit until 2005, and Paquette wasn't named as a defendant.
One of the man's lawyers, John Evers, told jurors in his closing argument Monday that a multimillion-dollar award was necessary to punish the diocese for protecting priests instead of children. Church lawyers contended that the diocese's leaders at the time believed pedophilia could be cured with prayer and psychological treatment.
Bishop Salvatore Matano told reporters at the courthouse: "The verdict is a very serious impact on a rural diocese, a small, rural diocese, and I do not want in any way to inflict any suffering or any pain on the faithful of this diocese because of what happened in the past."
"The evidence was compelling," said Jerome F. O'Neill, the lead lawyer representing the man. "Our client went through what no child should ever have to go through, and he did so because the diocese paid no attention to the perpetrator it was putting in its parishes."
He said the man had tears in his eyes when the verdicts were announced.
"What was important to him was that a jury had recognized what he had been through," O'Neill said.
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