Priests who have been credibly accused of abuse will be assigned an individual monitor with law enforcement experience to ensure they comply with a list of restrictions.
From The New York Times:
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo has agreed to submit to sweeping secular oversight of its operations in a legal settlement reached on Tuesday with the New York attorney general, Letitia James, resolving a lawsuit that accused the church and its officials of a years-long cover-up of sexual abuse.
Under the agreement, which is the first of its kind in New York, priests who have been credibly accused of abuse will be assigned an individual monitor with law enforcement experience to ensure they comply with a list of restrictions.
Those monitors will be overseen by Kathleen McChesney, a former high-ranking F.B.I. official who has also led the child protection office at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. As part of the settlement, two former Buffalo bishops, Richard Malone and Edward Grosz, will also be banned for life from holding any fiduciary role in a charity registered in New York.
“For far too long, the Buffalo Diocese and its leaders failed their most basic duty to guide and protect our children,” Ms. James said in a statement. “In choosing to defend the perpetrators of sexual abuse instead of defending the most vulnerable, the Buffalo Diocese and its leaders breached parishioners’ trust and caused many a crisis of faith.”
The settlement brings an end to the first legal action taken against the Roman Catholic Church by New York State, which launched investigations into all eight of the state’s Catholic dioceses as part of a nationwide wave of abuse inquiries that began in 2018. The Buffalo suit was filed in November 2020. The attorney general’s other seven investigations remain ongoing.
