NEW YORK
Syracuse.com
By Sean Kirst | skirst@syracuse.com
on September 15, 2015
At the beginning of the meeting, Dan Leonard was seated toward the back. He went Monday night to the Craftsman Inn in Fayetteville, where two adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse by parish priests – Charlie Bailey and Kevin Braney – shared their stories with a crowded room of listeners.
Once the meeting began – as Leonard saw the pain in the expressions of the two men in front of the audience – he moved to an open seat in the third row, where Braney and Bailey could see Leonard’s face and hear his voice.
His presence was a message:
They are not alone.
At the meeting, Bailey and Braney expressed a central thought: They’re dismayed by the words of Bishop Robert Cunningham, the top official in the Diocese of Syracuse. During a 2011 deposition involving allegations of abuse against a local priest, Cunningham was asked if an abused child has committed a sin.
“The boy is culpable,” Cunningham responded. He went on to say it was impossible – without full knowledge of the situation – to ascertain whether the child encouraged the abuse or “went along (with it) in any way.”
John O’Brien of The Post-Standard reported on that deposition in Sunday’s Post-Standard. Cunningham responded with a letter to Central New York’s Catholic community stating he regretted choosing those words, and that he does not believe a child can be a party to his or her own abuse.
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