Stepinac priest-principal ousted in '88 sex case

By Gary Stern and Richard Liebson
Journal News
April 12, 2002

http://www.thejournalnews.com/priests/12malone.html

A priest who served as principal at Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains was quietly removed in 1988 after police picked him up for soliciting sex from a teen-age male on a city street, police
The Rev. Donald Malone at the door of his Long Island home. (The Journal News/Stephen Schmitt)
and others familiar with the case have told The Journal News.

At a hastily arranged meeting between police and top officials of the Archdiocese of New York, it was decided that the matter would be dropped if the Rev. Donald T. Malone were removed from Stepinac and no longer allowed to work with youth.

The deal was cut, years before church officials would learn that Malone had been arrested in 1979 under similar circumstances.

Malone — who was known as "the Count" because he sometimes walked Stepinac's hallways in a black cape, holding a whip — was gone. It was summertime, weeks before what would have been the start of Malone's 10th year as principal of Stepinac, a prominent, all-boys high school that had been planned and built by Cardinal Francis Spellman.

Police confirmed the details of what took place after The Journal News inquired about Malone's exit from Stepinac, for the past 14 years a subject of mystery and rumor in White Plains and the region's Catholic community.

At a time when the Catholic Church is reeling from decades-old cases of sexual misconduct by priests, many of which were covered up by church officials, the Malone case sheds further light on how a major archdiocese once dealt with potentially embarrassing allegations against priests.

From the point of view of police, a key factor in the Malone case was that the teen-ager's family did not want to press charges. This was during a time when allegations of abuse against children or spouses were generally disregarded by authorities when victims did not cooperate.

"Back then, if the victim and the family didn't want to prosecute in a case like this, you didn't go around them," White Plains Police Chief James Bradley said. "We adhered to their wishes.''

Joseph Zwilling, spokesman for the archdiocese, confirmed that Malone was quickly taken out of Stepinac.

"When we were approached by the police, we removed him from the school immediately," he said.

Police say the teen-ager Malone approached was a minor, 16 or under, although they do not have his exact age. Zwilling, though, said church records showed he was 17.

Regardless, when teachers and students reported for the opening of the 1988-89 school year, no explanation was given for Malone's disappearance. He had been at Stepinac since 1970 as a teacher, dean of students and principal. But there were no farewell parties, no cards or gifts, for a priest who would not be back.

One veteran Westchester priest, who did not want to be identified because he said archdiocesan officials would not want him discussing the Malone matter, said the reason for Malone's removal from Stepinac was a well-kept secret from the day it happened.

"It was very closely guarded," said the priest, who learned only fragments of what took place. "The story did not get around. There are few people who really know what happened. But you often hear people ask one another, 'What about Don? Where's Don?'"

Even the Rev. James Healy, who served as assistant principal under Malone and took his place when Malone was whisked away, said he has never known what happened to his predecessor.

"I was never told anything," said Healy, now the pastor of St. Vito's Church in Mamaroneck. "I was told to assume the duties of principal, and I did."

After he left Stepinac, Malone was assigned to three parishes between 1989 and 1992: Blessed Sacrament on Staten Island, Holy Family in the Bronx and St. Patrick's in Highland Mills, Orange County.

"We have not received an accusation of any sort from that period," Zwilling said.

Only during Malone's time in Orange County did church officials learn that Malone had been arrested at a state Thruway rest stop in 1979 — the same year that Cardinal Terence Cooke appointed him principal of Stepinac — for public lewdness and loitering. The charges were later dropped.

In 1993, the archdiocese put Malone on a permanent leave of absence, Zwilling said. Malone has been seen in recent years saying Mass in the Hamptons, where he lives in a family-owned cottage on the waterfront. He does so at the request of individual pastors, Zwilling said.

Zwilling added that he was not aware of any accusations that Malone had acted inappropriately toward minors.

Malone, now 67, would answer few questions when approached by a reporter at his Southampton home, a cottage just down the road from a cove marina.

"I'm retired," said Malone, looking fit and rested in a red crew neck sweater. "I left when my terms at Stepinac were up. Nothing more. That's it."

According to police records, White Plains police were contacted in the summer of 1988 by a city family who said their son, a student at a high school other than Stepinac, had been solicited for sex in the downtown area. Police stopped a car fitting the parents' description and found Malone to be the driver.

The boy's family did not want to prosecute, insisting that Malone receive counseling and not be allowed to work with children.

Detectives contacted the archdiocese, and a meeting was arranged within two days. The archdiocese must have taken the situation quite seriously, because, according to police records, the church was represented by Bishop Henry Mansell, then an auxiliary bishop under Cardinal John O'Connor and now the bishop of Buffalo, and Monsignor James Murray, a lawyer and the now-retired director of Catholic Charities.

Cardinal Edward M. Egan also was an auxiliary bishop in New York at the time, as well as vicar of education. He would be named the bishop of Bridgeport, Conn., in November 1988. But there is no mention in police records of his being involved in the Malone case.

At the meeting, Mansell and Murray assured Carmine Motto, the late deputy public safety commissioner of White Plains, that if no charges were filed against Malone, he would be removed from Stepinac, sent for counseling and kept away from children.

"To that extent, I'd have to say the archdiocese was very cooperative,'' said John Dolce, the recently retired public safety commissioner of White Plains. "However, sometime later, after Motto retired, he came to see me because he was angry. He'd read that Malone had been given a new assignment that did, in fact, involve him with kids."

Dolce did not know how the matter was resolved.

Murray, who is now retired, told The Journal News he could not recall the Malone matter. Mansell was out of Buffalo and could not be reached for comment, said his spokesman, Kevin Keenan.

One former Stepinac teacher, who did not want to be identified because he feared that the archdiocese might tamper with his pension, said teachers weren't supposed to ask what happened to Malone when they returned to school in the fall of 1989. But anyone who had seen Malone wrestling with students in his office probably had a hunch that Malone had gotten into trouble, he said.

"When he left, there was just a stony silence, a black wall of silence," the former teacher said. "It was wrong, and it created a cynical attitude in the school. When the actions of a priest like Malone are covered up, it does not lead to the education of students, especially the moral education that Catholic schools say they're big on."