Deal on church abuse
B’klyn diocese & AG settle how to handle sex assault cases
The Diocese of Brooklyn and state Attorney General Letitia James announced a settlement Tuesday on a host of reforms to address accusations of years of mismanaging allegations against priests who were accused of sexual abuse.
Those reforms include the installation of a secular monitor to oversee how the diocese will handle allegations of clergy sexual abuse cases going forward. It also requires greater transparency on the part of the diocese.
“The diocese knew about this pervasive problem, but it did not adequately address allegations of sexual abuse and misconduct,” James said.
“Now, the diocese has made a commitment to implementing holistic reforms that will ensure every report of sexual abuse or misconduct is handled quickly and transparently. New Yorkers deserve to trust their faith leaders, and my office will continue to support the diocese’s efforts to rebuild that trust with their community.”
According to James’ office, an attorney general investigation found the diocese failed to consistently follow its own policies from 2002 regarding sexual abuse allegations, and that those policies were inadequate to protect children.
As part of the reforms, the diocese has agreed to send out a press release whenever credibly accused priests or other clergy members are removed from active ministry, put the offender’s name on a published list, inform the priest’s former parish and provide support to parishioners.
The reforms put to a close an investigation started by James’ office in 2018 that reviewed 33 cases of priests accused of sexual abuse.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops adopted a national charter in Dallas in 2002 to crack down on perv priests.
James’ investigators found that despite the charter the diocese held an inconsistent standard of what constituted a credible accusation, at times wrongly clearing priests. The diocese failed to adequately monitor some priests after an accusation, delayed taking actions against priests for years and sometimes decades, and slow-walked public disclosures, her office found.
In one instance, a priest admitted sometime before 2002 that he repeatedly sexually abused children and was removed from all pastoral duties, but the diocese didn’t inform his parishioners until 2017, James’ investigations found.
The diocese encouraged the priest to seek a voluntary “defrocking” after the charter was adopted, but he didn’t agree until 2007, and requested confidentiality. The diocese kept his defrocking secret until 2017, when it put his name on a published list, but in the interim he worked as a professor at two universities, according to James’ investigation.
In another case, a priest who’d been bounced from parish to parish after getting complaints since the 1990s wasn’t removed until 2018, and the public wasn’t notified about him until 2019.
In the decades before his removal, a nun resigned her post as a school principal in 2000 after she witnessed his alleged abuse and he got off with a warning. An accuser came forward in 2006 with allegations of more than 100 incidents of sexual abuse in the 1980s, but the diocese found the accusations “not credible” in 2009 despite witnesses corroborating several details, the AG’s office found.
Finally, in 2018, the priest was removed after two new complaints surfaced in 2016 and 2017, and the diocese reviewed the 2006 accuser and found those allegations to be credible after all.
In a statement Tuesday, the diocese said it worked diligently to deal with an onslaught of allegations after the Dallas charter was adopted — 121 between 2002 and 2005 — and those allegations were “immediately sent to the appropriate district attorney.”
In 2003, then-Diocese of Brooklyn Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio set up an independent reporting line for complaints, and during his tenure from 2003-2021, the diocese issued public statements about the outcome of investigations that led to the removal of 27 priests, diocese officials said Tuesday.
“This agreement concludes a difficult period in the life of the church. While the church should have been a sanctuary, I am deeply sorry that it was a place of trauma for the victims of clergy sexual abuse,” said current Brooklyn Bishop Robert Brennan.
“I pray God’s healing power will sustain them. Today, we move forward with the strongest policies in place for the protection of children and adults.”