Child Sex Abuse Victims Sue Catholic Church, Scouts
New state law opens door for legal action against abusers from decades past
BY MATT TRACY
A wave of legal action
spurred by the passage
of the Child Victims Act
has emerged in New
York State, where attorneys representing
victims of child sex abuse
on August 28 announced lawsuits
against the Archdiocese of New
York, the Diocese of Brooklyn, and
the Boy Scouts of America.
The Catholic Church and the
Boy Scouts, which have longstanding
reputations for shielding
abusers within their ranks, were
hit in State Supreme Court with
the lawsuits and formal discovery
requests, meaning they are being
asked to turn over years-old evidence
of improper actions toward
minors. The lawsuits allege the Boy
Scouts and the Catholic Church
have deliberately hidden fi les containing
evidence of abuse.
The victims are pursuing legal
retribution under the Child Victims
Act’s one-year “look-back window,”
which by temporarily suspending
the statute of limitations on abuse
crimes allows survivors to seek
some level of justice for the abuse
they suffered during their youth.
Many of those named in the lawsuits
allegedly had charges against
them substantiated internally decades
ago and are deceased — one
lawsuit names alleged abusers
whose time with the Boy Scouts
spanned the 1960s to the 1990s —
but in those cases, survivors are
still aiming for accountability from
the organizations that employed
them. In other cases, alleged abusers
are still alive.
Countless lawsuits targeting a
broad range of alleged predators
were fi led the day the law went into
effect on August 14. The lawsuits
unveiled on August 28 by Marsh
Law Firm and Pfau Cochran Vertetis
Amala, which have expertise in
representing survivors of child sex
abuse, were fi led exactly two weeks
after the law went into effect.
The discovery requests ask defendants
to turn over any relevant
notes, letters, telephone records,
photographs, sound recordings,
St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Midtown, the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, which is
the subject of numerous lawsuits alleging child sex abuse by priests and other offi cials.
emails, word fi les, and more, in
addition to the accused abuser’s
identifying information such as
home address, telephone number,
or place of employment.
In one complaint against the
Boy Scouts of America and its local
chapter, the Greater New York
Councils, attorneys said the Boy
Scouts have maintained internal
records called “perversion fi les”
and sought to keep them secret.
Court complaints against the
Catholic Church similarly allege
that the religious institution hid
fi les and refused to address abuse
even when the Archdiocese was
fully aware of the wrongdoing. One
lawsuit details alleged abuse from
1976 to 1979 by Father Arthur
Manzione, who was employed by
the Archdiocese and is charged
with carrying out much of his
abuse north of New York City at
Sacred Heart Parish in Newburgh.
The complainant accuses Manzione
of abusing him in church settings
from when he was 15 years
old until he was 18.
“Upon information and belief,
the Archdiocese and Sacred Heart,
their agents, servants, and employees,
concealed the sexual abuse
of children by Father Manzione
in order to conceal their own bad
acts in failing to protect children
from him, to protect their reputation,
and to prevent victims of such
sexual abuse by him from coming
forward during the extremely limited
statute of limitations prior to
MASSMATT/ FLICKR
the enactment of the CVA, despite
knowing that Father Manzione
would continue to molest children,”
the lawsuit states.
Michael Meenan, a former deputy
editor at Gay CIty News who
was sexually abused in the 1980s
by both a religious studies teacher
when he was attending Fordam
Prep and by a parish priest in the
Bronx, said he barrage of lawsuits
does not surprise him.
“These organizations fought for
years to block the Child Victims
Act,” he said. “Society needs to
wake up and realize that many
highly disturbed, motivated predators
seek to have sexual contact
with children. This is not about
religion or God. It is pure criminality.”
The lawsuits targeting the Catholic
Church are surfacing one year
after the publication of an explosive
grand jury report in Pennsylvania
revealing that 300 Catholic priests
abused children for decades and
that the Church covered it up.
That scandal pushed some in
the Church to resort to a discredited
canard, casting baseless blame
on the gay community. Former
Pope Benedict XVI — a strident foe
of LGBTQ rights dating back to his
days as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger,
when he was key player in the
papacy of Pope John Paul II — said
as much in an April essay when he
wrote that “homosexual cliques”
were responsible for changing the
climate in seminaries.
CRIME
In the aftermath of the Pennsylvania
report, the alt-righ t religious
sites Church Militant and LifeSite
News harassed an out gay Catholic
leader, Aaron Bianco, who told Gay
City News about the mistreatment
that pushed him to resign from his
position as a pastoral associate at
a parish in San Diego.
Bianco now worries the recent
fl ood of lawsuits will again spark a
blame game against gay men.
“I know immediately that that’s
where they will go,” Bianco said in
a phone interview. “There is a small
group in the Church who are very
loud who will automatically blame
homosexuals in the priesthood.
They refuse to look at science or
any other evidence that says pedophilia
has nothing to do with sexual
orientation. I think there are
those groups out there who love to
fi nd something that they can jump
on. If you go on any of their sites,
on a daily basis they are going after
homosexual priests.”
Bianco’s ties to the Church have
given him a closer look at its inner
workings, and through his work he
came to realize that those in top
Catholic leadership have withheld
key information.
“ I know the Church has these
fi les,” he said. “I know personally
that the Church hides fi les and
tries to keep it out of the public eye
even when district attorneys ask
for fi les.”
Whether attorneys can get the
Church or the Boy Scouts to turn
over any fi les is yet to be seen. If
a defendant refuses to comply with
the request within 20 days, attorneys
for the victims can fi le a motion
asking courts to force them to
turn over the documentation.
A Boy Scouts of America spokesperson
did not directly respond to
the legal action, but insisted that
the organization cares “deeply
about all victims of abuse and
sincerely apologize to anyone who
was harmed during their time in
Scouting.”
Neither the Archdiocese of New
York nor the Diocese of Brooklyn
responded to requests for comment.
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