Nashville Diocese Sexual Abuse
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — The Catholic Diocese of Nashville is defending how it handled a sexual abuse allegation against a priest who served as chaplain on the Dominican Campus in Nashville.An adult female student at Aquinas College claims the priest sexually assaulted her in 2017.
On Friday, a Catholic newspaper questioned why the Nashville Diocese did not open a formal investigation after the victim came forward.
The article in the London-based Catholic Herald is titled “Adult Abuse Case: Accusations of Grave Mishandling Across Church Jurisdictions.”
It focused on sexual abuse allegations against Father Kevin McGoldrick, who served as a priest on the Dominican Campus in Nashville from August of 2013 until June of 2019.
The allegations came from an adult female student at Aquinas College, which operates on the campus.
The article states that, in 2017, “Father McGoldrick got her drunk and sexually assaulted her while she was alone with him in his” residence.
According to the article, “she said she passed in and out of consciousness during the assault. ‘Every time I woke up, I hoped I was in a nightmare, and the chaplain of my college wasn’t on top of me,’ she says in a first person account. ‘I was wrong each time.'”
The victim initially stayed silent.
But in 2019, 18 months after it happened, she went to the Nashville Diocese.