The victim of a deadly beating outside a Lake Charles motel was a clergy abuse survivor whose testimony was pivotal in exposing sex abuse within the Catholic Church.

Scott Anthony Gastal, 50, was found in the parking lot of a motel in the 1000 block of N. Lakeshore Drive around 10 p.m. on March 2.

Gastal, 50, was one of the first, at age 11, to accuse a Catholic priest of sex abuse. He testified in the 1980s that his ...