BUFFALO (NY)
WKBW TV
January 16, 2019
By Charlie Specht
The Jesuit religious order released a list Tuesday of 50 priests who it said credibly abused children — including eight men assigned to schools or churches in Buffalo.
But 7 Eyewitness News has discovered some of the abusive priests are still wearing a collar and acting as priests, raising questions about whether the Catholic Church continues to withhold information from the public.
The Rev. J. Peter Conroy worked at Canisius College until 2002, when two women — Colleen O’Hara Carney and Molly O’Hara Ewing — came forward to say Fr. Conroy inappropriately touched and groped them when they were in seventh grade in the 1970s.
“It was very inappropriate behavior for anybody,” O’Hara Carney said. “He just pulled me down on his lap and the hand drifted under the school uniform.”
The Jesuits said Conroy admitted to the abuse in 2002 and they removed him from Canisius and “impeded” him from ministry that year.
The Jesuits’ Northeast province listed no assignments for Conroy after 2002 in the documents it released Tuesday, but the church’s own records show Conroy is still very much a priest — and he’s not the only one.
Other Buffalo Jesuits who abused minors were never “defrocked” or stripped of their status as Roman Catholic priests. Instead, some were quietly sent to retreat centers and other destinations where they serve to this day — even after they have been placed on the Jesuits’ abuse list.
“Even today, they cannot tell the truth,” Patrick Wall said of religious orders like the Jesuits.
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