UNITED STATES
BishopAccountability.org
Summary of Case: William Authenrieth was ordained for the Diocese of Brooklyn in 1962. He was an associate priest at St. Vincent Ferrer until 1973, when he moved to the Diocese of Orlando, Florida.
Authenrieth’s time in Florida was marked by numerous transfers, due to allegations that he had sexually abused children. In 1978, after a parishioner at All Souls in Sanford reported to the diocese that Authenrieth had touched his son’s genitals, the priest was quietly moved to St. Mary’s in Rockledge. In 1983 a St. Mary’s parishioner told its pastor that his three young altar-boy sons had been fondled and sodomized by Authenrieth. The pastor told the parishioner to pray, and nothing was done. The family later sued. A fourth young man alleging abuse by the priest at St. Mary’s during the same time-period also sued in the mid-1980s. Authenrieth admitted to fondling the four boys, and the cases were settled. In a deposition related to the litigation, Authenrieth stated that he had brought more than one-hundred men to St. Mary’s for sex. He also testified that his reason for leaving Brooklyn was that a young male parishioner, “about 18”, threatened to reveal that the two of them had engaged in sex. In October 1985 Authenrieth was removed from ministry and sent to the House of Affirmation in Massachusetts for treatment.
A 2002 lawsuit claimed that Authenrieth had sexually abused a boy in the parish rectory during his time at St. Vincent Ferrer’s in Brooklyn. Further accusations emerged along with lawsuits in 2012, 2013 and 2014 regarding sexual abuse of young males by Authenrieth in Rockledge and Sanford.
Authenrieth is last known to have been living in a retirement community in Massachusetts.
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