Father Nicholas V. Cudemo

Cudemo lived at Saint Helena in Center Square. He continued to teach at Archbishop
Kennedy for another four years after this allegation.
Three victims from Father Cudemo’s tenure at Kennedy report abuse in 1991.
Although they did not surface until many years later, in 1991, subsequent
allegations show that during his time as a teacher at Kennedy High School, Fr. Cudemo
molested at least three other girls. Two of the girls were related to him: one, Irene, who
later became a nun, was his second cousin; the other, Ruth, was her cousin, but unrelated
to Fr. Cudemo by blood. (Fr. Cudemo had earlier molested Irene’s sister, Donna, while he
was still at Saint Stanislaus in the 1960s.)
• Sister Irene
Sister Irene testified before the Grand Jury that Fr. Cudemo started visiting her
home frequently when she was in 6 th or 7 th grade and her sister Donna, who was five years
older, was in high school. When Irene entered high school in 1969, Fr. Cudemo began
taking Irene to baseball and basketball games at Kennedy and at Saint Joseph’s University.
On one occasion, after a game at Kennedy, Fr. Cudemo stopped his car on route to
Irene’s house and started kissing her, as she described it, “kind of all over me.” She said
she was uncomfortable with the way he was touching her body and told him she wanted to
go home. At the time, Irene was 15.
From then on she tried to avoid being alone with him, but he managed to abuse her
another time while driving a car full of young people. As Irene sat in the front center, next
to him, Fr. Cudemo took her hand, put it on his penis, and held it there. Frozen in fear, and
not wanting to draw attention, she said she let it happen, becoming numb and pretending
she wasn’t in her body.
Sister Irene testified that embarrassment kept her from telling anyone about these
incidents, and that it never occurred to her he might be doing the same thing to other
people. She did not learn of Fr. Cudemo’s severe sexual abuse of her young cousin Ruth
until 1991.
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