LEXINGTON — A Lexington man has filed a lawsuit against the Roman Catholic Dioceses of Lexington and Covington, alleging he was sexually abused by a priest at the Cathedral of Christ the King in 1983.

        Will L. McGinnis III, 33, accused the Rev. Bill Fedders of sexually abusing him three times over a period that included his eighth-grade year and the summer before the ninth grade.

        Father Fedders could not be reached for comment. He is pastor at Jesus Our Savior Catholic Church in Morehead, which also serves as the Newman Center for Catholic students at Morehead State University.

        Mr. McGinnis filed the lawsuit on his own behalf Monday in Fayette Circuit Court.

        He said in an interview Monday that he was a 14-year-old altar boy at the cathedral at the time the abuse allegedly occurred.

        Mr. McGinnis says the Covington and Lexington dioceses failed to report the alleged abuse to law enforcement authorities and did not properly supervise priests under their control. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.

        Two church spokesmen, Tom Shaughnessy of Lexington and Tim Fitzgerald of Covington, said diocese officials had not seen the lawsuit and had no comment.

        Lexington churches were part of the Covington diocese until the Lexington diocese was created in 1988.

        Mr. McGinnis, a real estate broker, ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 1998 and as a Democratic candidate for Congress in 2000. He also worked as a stripper for a “strip-o-gram” service from 1992 to 2000, he said.

        This is the second recent sex-abuse lawsuit against the Lexington and Covington dioceses. On May 30, Lexington lawyer Robert Treadway filed a $50 million class-action lawsuit on behalf of four unnamed men and one unnamed woman. They allege they were sexually abused by priests under the two dioceses' control.

        Two lawsuits against the Archdiocese of Louisville accuse Lexington Bishop J. Kendrick Williams of sex abuse in 1969 and 1981, when he was a priest. They are among more than a hundred lawsuits filed against the Louisville Archdiocese since mid-April alleging sexual abuse by more than a dozen priests.

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