DETROIT - Former major league baseball player Tom Paciorek says he and three of his brothers were molested when they were children by a priest who was removed this week from another Michigan church. <br>
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The brothers grew up just outside Hamtramck on Detroit's east side and attended Hamtramck Saint Ladislaus, where the Reverend Gerald Shirilla was a teacher. <br>
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The 63-year-old Shirilla was removed Wednesday from Saint Mary Catholic Church in Alpena, in northern Michigan, where he accepted an assignment last August. <br>
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Shirilla has not responded to repeated requests for comment. His attorney told the Detroit Free Press that the priest has done nothing that would make him unfit for ministry. <br>
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The 55-year-old Paciorek, who now lives in Atlanta and once played for the Braves, says he lodged a complaint about Shirilla with the Roman Catholic Archidocese of Detroit in 1993 after another former student filed a lawsuit about the priest. The archdiocese placed Shirilla on administrative leave in response and prohibited him from public ministry. <br>
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However, the lawsuit was dismissed in 1999 because the statue of limitation had run out -- state law required victims abused as minors to file for monetary civil damages before they turned 19.
