NEW YORK – The Catholic Church’s Diocese of Buffalo, New York State, accused for years of covering up numerous cases of child sexual abuse by members of the clergy, agreed on Tuesday with authorities to undergo an external check to ensure that you pay your bills in the future.
The deal was announced by the New York District Attorney’s Office, which after a two-year investigation in 2020 accused the diocese and two of its leaders for negligence in handling child sexual abuse complaints, which led to protection. of the alleged pedophile priests of any charges.
The diocese of Buffalo, which has around 600,000 worshipers, according to local media, declared bankruptcy in 2020 following a flurry of child sexual abuse lawsuits, made possible by a legal window opened in the state by the Child Victims Act to denounce. these prescribed cases.
According to a note from the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the agreement focuses on the diocese’s “institutional response” to the “crisis of sexual abuse of the clergy” and is independent of the reports of victims of abuse, which number more than 900 (among the cases made possible by the legal window and by the bankruptcy proceedings), which may continue.
Now, this Church jurisdiction agrees to be audited for three years, extendable to five, by an independent auditor Kathleen McChesney, former agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) expert in cases of sexual abuse of Catholic clergy, as well as the his team, already bears the costs.
The agreement establishes mechanisms that will force the Diocese of Buffalo to have a program to monitor priests accused of abuse and to undergo an annual compliance audit by McChesney and his team, who will publish publicly available reports, as well as work with the authorities.
The current bishop, Michael Fisher, will be responsible for taking measures to protect parishioners and the public from those who are credibly accused of sexual abuse.
Furthermore, his predecessor, former Bishop Richard Malone, who resigned Pope Francis last December in the wake of the scandal, is banned for life from any secular fiduciary liability in any NGO registered in New York, as well as the former assistant to the bishop, Edoardo Gross.
The New York District Attorney has other ongoing investigations into the Catholic Church in the state, starting with the archdiocese of New York, which is the second largest in the United States, and the other seven dioceses in the area, including Albany, the capital. , and Brooklyn.
