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Donald Marshall, 45, of West Allis, Wis., said last week in an interview that Father Murphy had molested him at the Lincoln Hills School for Boys, a detention center near Boulder Junction

Jeff Anderson has filed thousands of lawsuits alleging sex abuse by priests and won tens of millions of dollars for his clients, but he has had a bigger goal in mind for nearly two decades. He wants to bring his career-long legal crusade against misconduct in the Roman Catholic Church right to the top.

A man who says he was among some 200 deaf boys allegedly molested by a priest in Wisconsin said Monday the Vatican’s defensive responses to revelations about the case make him feel like he did when he was 12, when no one would listen to him about the abuse.

advocate for church abuse victims, secured the rarely seen church correspondence about Murphy after a Milwaukee Superior Court judge ordered the Archdiocese of Milwaukee to turn over the material.

Two Wisconsin bishops urged the Vatican office led by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — now Pope Benedict XVI — to let them conduct a church trial against a priest accused of molesting some 200 deaf boys, but the Vatican ordered the process halted, church and Vatican documents show.

Just days after Pope Benedict XVI chastised Irish bishops for covering up clerical sexual abuse in Ireland, new documents suggest he did nothing to discipline a Wisconsin priest he knew had molested scores of deaf boys — and may have blocked a church trial in the case.

Four American campaigners for the victims of clerical sex abuse were this morning detained by police after holding an “unauthorised” demonstration on the edge of St Peter’s Square to protest against decades of Church “silence”.

Top Vatican officials — including the future Pope Benedict XVI — did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a lawsuit.

Their lawsuit alleges church officials endangered them. Each plaintiff is seeking $50,000 for long-term therapy, plus legal costs.

Another sexual abuse lawsuit has been filed against the Christian Brothers’ Anthony (Raimond) Rose, the 10th in the past 13 months.