Former Rockland, NY, pastor accused of child sex abuse
Lawsuit alleges priest abused boy 150 times about 40 years ago
Matt Spillane, Rockland/Westchester Journal News
A Catholic priest who spent years as a pastor and vicar in Rockland County is now facing an allegation of child abuse from decades ago.
Monsignor Edward Weber was one of four priests in the Archdiocese of New York to be placed on administrative leave following such an accusation, according to Catholic New York, a newspaper run by the archdiocese.
Weber has served as pastor of St. Francis of Assisi parish in West Nyack since 1994 and as regional vicar of Rockland County since 2002. He will leave those positions. Before that, he served as parochial vicar at St. Margaret of Cortona, the Bronx; and St. Margaret Mary and St. Sylvester’s, both on Staten Island. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1976 and named a monsignor in 2006.
He recently served as a weekend associate at St. Gregory Barbarigo Church in Garnerville.
Monsignor Edward Weber serves as the grand marshal of the 51st annual Pearl River St. Patrick's Day parade on March 17, 2013. (Photo: TJN file photo)
Weber is the director of priest personnel for the archdiocese.
Three current pastors in Westchester were also put on administrative leave this month because of decades-old abuse claims: Monsignor Edward Barry of Holy Rosary in Hawthorne, Rev. William Luciano of Blessed Sacrament in New Rochelle, and Monsignor James White of St. Vito-Most Holy Trinity in Mamaroneck.
The accusation against Weber stems from his time at St. Sylvester Church on Staten Island. According to a lawsuit filed in Manhattan in August, a Florida man named Arne Haughwout accused Weber of sexually abusing him at least 150 times while Haughwout was between the ages of 11 and 16, from 1978 to 1983.
Haughwout filed the lawsuit as the Child Victims Act went into effect in August, opening a one-year window for people to take legal action in sexual abuse cases, regardless of how long ago the abuse occurred.
Weber has often been the face of the archdiocese when dealing with sexual abuse.
When a deacon was removed from Holy Name of Mary Church in Croton-on-Hudson in 2013 because of abuse allegations, Weber appeared at Sunday Masses to explain what had transpired. When John O’Keefe, the former pastor of St. Margaret of Antioch Church in Pearl River, was removed from ministry in December 2015, Weber represented the archdiocese at several weekend Masses.
Last year, it was widely reported that a Catholic college in Escondido, California, John Paul the Great University, was outraged that Weber had vouched for a New York priest even though the archdiocese had reopened an investigation into allegations against the priest.
In 2004, as the Catholic church's sex abuse scandal was coming to light, Weber, then the Rockland County vicar, spoke about the problem of clergy abuse.
"I would hate to compare dioceses, because if one child is damaged, it is a tragedy," he said at the time. "But 1.1% of the clergy means we are no different than other religions, or other areas outside religion, when it comes to this problem. I'm not trying to make excuses, and we are making real efforts to protect children and reach out with compassion."
If it was really 1.1% we might not even be aware of the problem. But, I suspect it is more like ten times that.
Rockland Co., NY
Retired PA priest under investigation for sexually abusing a minor dies
GREENSBURG, Pa. - A retired priest of the Diocese of Greensburg who was under investigation for allegations of sexually abusing a minor has died.
Msgr. Michael W. Matusak died on Sunday at the diocese's residence for retired priests.
He was removed from his positions and placed on administrative leave after a credible allegation was made of him sexually abusing a minor.
He resigned and retired in July after 44 years.
The results of the police investigation have still not been shared with the Diocese, according to a news release.
Catholic Institute Posts List of 11 Leaders Credibly Accused of Child Sex Abuse
BY DAVID GEE
A total of 11 religious leaders have been credibly accused of sexually abusing children or vulnerable adults at a Roman Catholic institute in Cincinnati, Ohio, the facility recently disclosed.
Glenmary Home Missioners voluntarily released a list of men it deemed credibly accused of sexually abuse over several years. That list included seven priests and four brothers (who aren’t ordained), stretching back 80 years.
“We hired a retired FBI investigator to go through all of our files going back, as far as I understand it, through our whole 80 years of existence, and find out whatever he could regarding the abuse of minors or vulnerable adults,” said John Stegeman, spokesman for the organization.
Eight of the 11 men accused have served in the Cincinnati area, officials said. Only two of the 11 men identified are still living.
Officials with Glenmary Home Missioners said the list is the result of a yearlong forensic review, that they themselves commissioned to promote transparency…
These types of releases are becoming much more common, like when Catholic leaders in Texas released the names of hundreds of priests accused of sexually abusing young children over several decades. The thinking here is that it’s better to get in front of the story than to have government officials release the names themselves. (In Texas, all of those names were of people who have since passed away.)
But what’s going on with the two Glenmary men who are on that list and still alive?
Former priest Anthony Jablonowski served as a priest on loan with Glenmary from 1976 to 1980. The charges against him are related to an assignment in the diocese of Cheyenne, Wyoming, after he left Glenmary. In 2004 he pleaded no contest to taking indecent or immoral liberties with a 17-year-old boy. He also faced a civil lawsuit. He was defrocked in 2006. He served 15 months of a seven-year sentence.
The other person named in the list, a religious brother, left the society in 1993. WLWT is not naming him because he has not been criminally charged. We could not locate either man for comment.
“Glenmary is confident in our policies and procedures that we follow under this of what constitutes a credible allegation,” Stegeman said.
You can give them credit for releasing the list, and credit for releasing it before all the men had died, but obviously, it would’ve been far better had the Church taken more direct action when these allegations were made. It’s hard to give them the benefit of the doubt regarding transparency when these lists are being published long after the victims have spent a lifetime dealing with their trauma.
Special report blasts Catholic Dioceses in Colorado
BY PAM ZUBECK 
St. Mary's Cathedral in Colorado Springs.
Over the last 70 years in Colorado, at least 166 children have been victimized by 43 Roman Catholic priests, with the Catholic Church taking steps to cover up the abuse, moving priests to other parishes where they repeated their crimes, and often failed to report those crimes to authorities as required by law, according to a new report released Oct. 23.
The report further reveals that during those years, at least 127 children were victimized by 22 Roman Catholic priests in the Archdiocese of Denver, at least three children were victimized by two Roman Catholic priests in the Diocese of Colorado Springs, and at least 36 children were victimized by 19 Roman Catholic priests in the Diocese of Pueblo.
From the report:
Notably, the data from our review also indicates that historically on average it took 19.5 years before a Colorado Diocese concretely restricted an abusive priest’s authority after receiving an allegation that he was sexually abusing children. (This figure does not even include the 7 alleged abusers for whom the Colorado Dioceses never put any restriction in place during their lifetimes.) Nearly a hundred children were sexually abused in the interim. However, from the data available to us, it appears in the last 10 years the Colorado Dioceses have immediately suspended the powers of any accused priest pending further investigation.
No cases have been referred to prosecutors, however, because investigators found only one allegation that could be viable for prosecution within the statute of limitations, and that allegation already has been reported to the authorities.
The 263-page report also said that since June 2002, the Denver Archdiocese failed to report 25 of the 39 recorded allegations of clergy child sex abuse that Colorado law required it to report to law enforcement.
Funded by an anonymous donor, the report stems from a seven-month investigation led by Colorado’s former U.S. attorney, Bob Troyer, under an agreement between Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser's Office and the three Catholic dioceses — in Denver, Colorado Springs and Pueblo.
The report names two serial abusers — Father Leonard Abercrombie and Father Harold Robert White.
The report described White this way:
White was the most prolific known clergy child sex abuser in Colorado history. His sexual abuse of children began before he was ordained in 1960, and it continued for at least 21 years in at least 6 parishes from Denver to Colorado Springs to Sterling to Loveland to Minturn to Aspen. During that time, it is more likely than not he sexually abused at least 63 children. This one priest’s career and the Denver Archdiocese’s management of it present a microcosm of virtually all the failures we found elsewhere in our review of the Colorado Dioceses’ child sex abuse history. The Denver Archdiocese knew from the outset of White’s career that he was a child sex abuser. When he had sexually abused enough children at a parish that scandal threatened to erupt, the Denver Archdiocese moved him to a new one geographically distant enough that White was not known there. The Denver Archdiocese repeated this cycle at least 6 times and never once restricted his ministry, or removed him from ministry, or sent him off for genuine psychiatric evaluation and care.
White was removed from the ministry in 1993 and died in 2006. Abercrombie died in 1994.
In outlining each allegation, again and again the victims were not believed and even punished.
In one case, a young boy told his parish school principal that White had fondled him and was "doing queer things to him." In response, the report says, "The principal grabbed the boy, slammed his head against a blackboard, and told him never to talk about the subject again."
Even after White admitted to some behaviors, the church kept him in positions where he interacted with children for years.
According to the report, White fondled a 15-year-old boy several times and masturbated himself while doing so one of those times in 1963 and 1964 while assigned to St. Mary's High School in Colorado Springs. The boy reported the abuse, which at that time was the 13th report of White sexually abusing children.
The Denver Archdiocese removed White and sent him to treatment at Via Coeli in New Mexico for five months and then assigned him to St. Anthony Parish in Sterling where he continued to abuse children there and elsewhere.
Another St. Mary's student reported being abused by White and was told by church officials, "You'll be fine." He was then expelled.
There is more to this story on the Colorado Springs Independent.
Child Sex Abuse and the Catholic Church
Child victims of abuse by a Catholic priest call on New York City's most influential cleric to remove him from ministry
Al JazeeraIn a series of exclusive interviews with Fault Lines, several men across New York City come forward with painful memories of abuse by a Catholic priest.
They say that Father John Paddack - who was ordained in 1984 and had been ministering in New York until he was suspended in July - molested them during confession and counselling sessions in different Catholic schools across the city.
They are allowing these predator priests to frolic around
aimlessly on the streets of New York, with open access,
under the shield of a collar.
Joseph Caramanno, victim
The men allege years of abuse by Paddack, sparking the latest revelations in a decades-old scandal that has shaken the Catholic Church to its foundation.
The church should "stop hiding", says Joseph Caramanno, one of the men who says he was abused by Paddack while in high school, and one of the first to open a public case against the priest.
"They are allowing these predator priests to frolic around aimlessly on the streets of New York, with open access, under the shield of a collar," he says.
Another victim, Gabriel* - now a father of two - says he was molested by Paddack as a 12-year-old Catholic school student.
"That destroyed my youth," he says about the abuse. "That could have killed me, honestly."
For many years, these men shared their stories privately, among close confidants. But when New York's restrictive statute of limitations law for victims of child sex abuse was amended in 2019, they went public with their claims.
"The Archdiocese has known about the allegations against Monsignor Paddack for years, more than six years. Those allegations have been kept quiet by the Archdiocese," says Mike Reck, one of the lawyers for the victims.
Cardinal Dolan, meanwhile, has told the 2.5 million Catholics under his watch to rest assured, claiming there are no active priests facing credible abuse allegations in his Archdiocese. Clergy abuse, he said, was largely a problem of the past.
However, our investigation into Father Paddack revealed a different story, one that raises questions about New York's Catholic hierarchy, and whether its leader has put the prestige of the church above the survival of its victims.
For this investigation, Fault Lines spoke to five of the men who accuse Father Paddack of abuse; allegations that form a pattern starting from the early 1980s until the early 2000s, the victims' lawyers say.
*Not his real name
Scottish monk admits Catholic school failings
over child sex abuse
Conor RiordanThe Times
A monk at a Catholic boarding school claimed that there were failings that allowed the sexual abuse of children to take place.
Julian Harrison gave evidence to the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry about his time as a staff member at St Joseph’s in Dumfries between 1962 and 1976.
Known as Brother Francis John while working at the establishment, he claimed never to have seen any physical or sexual assaults take place while he was there, but said he later found out about colleagues who had carried out or been accused of such acts.
Mr Harrison, 80, said: “There were failings in the end, yes. There’s so much more awareness of sexual abuse as a problem than there was in those days.
Disgraced Irish American cardinal faces
further child sex abuse claims
BY: Harry BrentThe Irish Post
AN IRISH AMERICAN cardinal who became the first minister in the history of the Catholic Church to be defrocked due to allegations of child sex abuse abuse is now facing fresh new accusations.
Former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick is accused of abusing at least seven boys between 1970 and 1990, as well as six more allegations of abuse by seminarians and former seminarians.
According to the Washington Post, the new allegations have been confirmed by three sources, including one that has "direct knowledge of the claims U.S. church officials sent to the Vatican in January."
Earlier in the year, McCarrick became the first-ever bishop to be defrocked in the Catholic Church after allegations that he sexually abused two minors and sexually harassed seminarians emerged.
President George W. Bush meets with the Cardinal Theodore McCarrick in 2005
McCarrick, 89, is unlikely to face criminal prosecution for his alleged abuse and harassment of the youth and seminarian cases first reported in the summer of 2018. Those allegations relate to crimes that would be beyond the statutes of limitation in the United States, where they are said to have occurred.
When, McCarrick claimed in an interview with Slate that he "did not believe" he did the things he was being accused of, which lead some to believe that the former Cardinal was leaving it an open question, suggesting that he could have done it.
Either way, his response in September this year only prompted further allegations from people claiming they'd been abused by him, frustrated at the thought of him denying any wrongdoing.
One of the victims who has anonymously come forward claims that McCarrick was able to get away with it because of his natural gifts: "He was charming. He was self-effacing. He was completely disarming. And he ran that game on everyone. He ran it on his colleagues, donors and on young boys. Everyone around this guy is just a different shade of victim."
The case on McCarrick remains open for the time being.
If you had the nerve, Harry Brent, to pursue this line further, I think you would find that the largest demographic of priests and Bishops credibly accused of child sexual abuse in the English speaking world, would be Irish!
====================================================================================
Credible allegations of child sexual abuse against
6 former priests, 1 deacon in Boise diocese
The list was released by the Diocese of Boise also includes names of priests of other dioceses with allegations who were at one point or another assigned in Boise.
Author: KTVB Staff
BOISE, Idaho — Since the 1950s, there have been six priests and one deacon that have credible allegations of child sexual abuse while assigned or associated with the Diocese of Boise, according to a list released by the Diocese.
Incidents date back to 1950, with some as recent as 2018. The Diocese said the incidents are dated to the approximate time that they happened. The list also includes the years that the abuse was reported to the church.
The priests and sole deacon who have not passed away have been laicized, or dismissed from the clergy, by the Catholic Church.
The Diocese released the list on Monday, nearly three weeks after the Associated Press published a national list of clergy members who have allegations of child sexual abuse. Idaho was one of the few states that did not have a complete list of priests accused of sexual abuse.
KTVB's Joe Parris reached out to the Diocese of Boise for a list after the AP story was published.
Here's the full list:
Simmons, Donald (Deceased)
Incidents: 1950, ‘56
Reported: 2002
Later, Morris (Deceased)
Incidents: 1960s and 70s
Reported: 2003
Kuiper, Michael (Deceased)
Incident: 1974
Reported: 1994
Worsley, James
Incidents: 1976-1981
Reported: 1992
Left Idaho, laicized.
The diocese that he was relocated to was informed.
Gould, William (Deceased)
Incident: 1981
Reported: 2010
Howell, Robert “Rap” (Deacon)
Incident: 2002
Reported: 2004.
Possession of Child Pornography Served prison sentence, Laicized
Faucher, W. Thomas
Incident: 2018
2018: Convicted of Possession and Distribution of Child Pornography. Imprisoned, Laicized.
The list also included names of ten priests of other dioceses and religious orders that have been assigned to Boise at one point or another from 1960 to the present.
Cornelius (McKenna), John Seminarian
Ordained for Seattle Archdiocese
Incidents: 1968, 1970, 1971, 1973
Reported: 2001
Left the Diocese of Boise to be ordained elsewhere in the 1970s. Seattle Archdiocese took action.
Meunier, Luke (Deceased)
Diocesan priest from Canada
Incident: 1971
Reported: 1993
Kuiper, Michael (Deceased)
Diocesan priest from Canada
Incidents: 1971
Reported: 1993
McSorley, James
Religious Order
Incident: 1972
Reported: 2004
Left Idaho in 1975.
His religious order was notified, but his whereabouts are unknown.
Schuck, Martin (Deceased)
Diocesan priest from New York state.
Incidents: 1974-76
Reported: 2003
Baltazar, Carmelo Melchior (Mel)
Philippine Diocese of Metolos
Incidents: Late 1970s and 1985
Reported: 1985
Imprisoned: 1985
Garcia, Ruben
Incardinated in Diocese of Tijuana, Mexico
Incidents: 1980s
Reported: 1991
Imprisoned
Connolly, Thomas
Religious Order
Incidents: Early 1980s
Reported: 2012
Permanently removed from ministry, resides in another state. Incidents were reported to his home diocese and Religious Order.
O’Grady, Peter (Deceased)
Religious Order
Incidents: 1984 and 1985
Reported: 2003
Arockiam, Francis
Order from India
Incidents: 1996
Reported: 1996
Expelled from Diocese back home in India.
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