A Honduran asylum-seeker living in Tennessee alleges in a federal lawsuit that the Diocese of Knoxville tried to sabotage a police investigation after she accused a priest of groping her during a grief counseling session following her husband’s death.
Identified in court papers as Jane Doe, the mother of three alleges in the lawsuit filed on Nov. 10 that the diocese “obstructed law enforcement” and tried to intimidate her into “abandoning her cooperation with the criminal prosecution” of the Rev. Antony Devassey Punnackal.
Punnackal, who was the pastor of St. Mary's Catholic Church in Gatlinburg, was indicted in January by a Sevier County grand jury on two counts of sexual battery against the Honduran woman. That case is ongoing.His lawyer, Travis McCarter, said in an email that Punnackal “maintains his innocence, as he has from the beginning of this process.”
As for Punnackal, Wogan said the priest was “taken out of active ministry in the diocese on Jan. 6, 2022.”This is not the first time that the Diocese of Knoxville, led by Bishop Rick Stika, has been accused of trying to cover up alleged sex misconduct by a priest. In February, athat he was raped by a seminarian in 2019 and that Stika and his allies in the diocese tried to intimidate the accuser “into silence.
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