Campaigners representing survivors of clerical abuse have welcomed moves by an alleged victim of an Irish priest, who was moved to the US from Dublin, to sue an individual diocese there for deliberately failing to disclose his previous history in Ireland.

The alleged victim, known as "John Doe 76", claims he was molested by Fr Patrick Joseph McCabe in the early 1980s in the Santa Rosa diocese after he was transferred there by the late Archbishop of Dublin Dermot Ryan.

He is seeking unspecified damages from the diocese, and has claimed that the church knew the priest had been accused of abusing boys but had failed to warn the parish where he worked.

He also claims the Bishop of Santa Rosa committed fraud by not revealing to the congregation that McCabe had been the subject of several allegations of child sex abuse in Ireland before he was moved to the US.

McCabe (74) is currently in federal custody in California, where he is awaiting extradition to Ireland to answer charges that he sexually assaulted boys in Ireland from 1973 to 1981.

Barbara Blaine, president of the US-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests group, said she believed that such actions were the "only hope" for change within the Catholic church.

"Church officials don't do the right thing because it's the right thing to do. It's only when pressure from external sources – in particular financial pressure – is applied that they act," she told the Sunday Tribune.