Posted on 08/26/2021 6:18:28 PM PDT by marshmallow
After nearly 1,000 abuse claims were filed against the Diocese of Buffalo in the last two years, the diocese’s Bishop Michael Fisher called it a “tragedy of epic proportions.”
The time window to file civil lawsuits in old cases of child sex abuse in New York expired on Aug. 14. A total of 924 claims were filed against the Diocese of Buffalo, more than any other diocese in the state. Nearly 11,000 total claims were filed in New York under the act.
“It is of paramount importance to deal with the Church’s obligations to survivors forthrightly and to work to repair the enormous damage that has been done not only to the reputation of the Church here in Western New York, but most importantly to the lives of those affected,” Bishop Fisher stated in a letter dated Aug. 21. Fisher was installed as bishop of Buffalo in January 2021.
The state’s Child Victims Act set up the temporary window to file civil lawsuits in old cases of child sex abuse where the statute of limitations had already expired. While the time window was originally set to close last year, former governor Andrew Cuomo (D) extended it another year due to the ongoing pandemic.
“My reason for communicating with you on these matters has everything to do with my view that as the Catholic faithful of Western New York, we are very much a family that must face its challenges together with candor and with as much transparency as we are able to provide,” Bishop Fisher stated to Catholics in the diocese.
Fisher added that the diocese is “fully focused on fulfilling what this process is all about,” meaning a “sense of restitution, closure and healing for all those who were abused by members of the clergy.”
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicnewsagency.com ...
It was not a “tragedy”.
It was evil human beings molesting children, evil human beings covering it up, and an evil church trying to continue the cover up...
If the church will not admit is was raw evil, then it still is raw evil.
The Catholic church has known since the 1980’s at least that they had a problem with pedophile priests.
Instead of cleaning it up, they shuffled them around to unsuspecting parishes and made the problem worse with cover ups.
Anyone can file a claim.
(Buffalo) Bishop (Kmiec) Named in RICO Lawsuit Dies
Edward U. Kmiec died Saturday night at the age of 84. The head of the Buffalo diocese from 2004–2012, Kmiec was named in a 2019 lawsuit alleging he and other diocesan officials covered up clerical sex abuse.
Buffalo-area attorney Kevin Stocker named Kmiec in the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) suit for his part in moving more than $90 million in assets to protect church holdings from clergy sex-abuse claims.
Malone also wrote a letter recommending Rev. Arthur Smith for a post as a cruise ship chaplain after Smith was accused of inappropriate behavior with two men and a boy. And during Malone’s tenure as bishop, Rev. Fabian Maryanski, accused of child sexual abuse many years ago, remained in ministry at Nativity Church in Clarence until a Buffalo News article in May 2018 revealed accusations against him. These events were reported before and led to Malone’s resignation. The details in the attorney general’s 218-page report, many obtained from the diocese’s own files, shed new light in Malone’s apparent complicity in covering up crimes and misdeeds by diocesan priests, despite his assurances that he did no such thing.
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The tipping point was the release of private audio recordings in which Malone discussed keeping quiet about an alleged sexual harassment by a priest of an adult seminarian and on another priest’s love letter to the seminarian.
In that era, the consensus advice of psychologists was to minimize such abuse on the theory that children were aturally forgetful and resilient.
It’s just evil to cover that up, it’s the reason I left the Church.
Stunning! And beyond stunning!
The Catholic Church is mostly pro-life when it comes to pregnancy, contraception and abortion.
But they generally oppose the death penalty.
And they facilitate sex abuse of children and ACTIVELY shield pedophiles.
Friends, it doesn’t add up. I don’t understand what game they are playing.
The cover-up of sexual abuse in the Church was and is evil. My point is not to excuse the cover-up but to point out its connections to similar evil in the psychology profession. The roots of those evils run wide and deep.
You are correct, the psychology profession is full of perverts, too.
The Catholic Church has lost its way.
NO backing morality cause they can’t afford to lose donations from the LGBT crowd as the Church needs the donations to help pay off judgements against them.
And they facilitate sex abuse of children and ACTIVELY shield pedophiles.
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