BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News
February 19, 2019
By Jay Tokasz
The Buffalo Diocese has offered to pay Thomas W. Travers because he was a victim of clergy sexual abuse as a boy.
But the diocese refuses to add Monsignor Sylvester J. Holbel — the man Travers says raped him — to its list of 80 priests who have been credibly accused of sexually abusing children.
Travers said Holbel, a former superintendent of Catholic schools, groomed him from the age of 9 and then had molested him multiple times by age 11.
Also missing from the diocese’s list is Monsignor Joseph J. Vogel, the founding pastor of Queen of Heaven Church in West Seneca, even though the diocese offered a woman $75,000 through its compensation program to settle a claim that Vogel molested her decades ago when she was 12.
Diocese spokeswoman Kathy Spangler said those names are not on the diocese’s list because the priests are deceased and had just a single abuse complaint against them.
Bishop Richard J. Malone won’t publicly identify as abusers 48 deceased priests who each had a single allegation against them. Diocese officials said they wrestled over how to balance providing more transparency in their response to child sex abuse while also ensuring that a dead priest’s legacy isn’t tarnished when that priest had no opportunity to defend himself against a claim. Malone decided that if a deceased priest had at least two credible allegations against him, his name would go on the list.
The Vatican does not have a universal church standard for publicly identifying abusive priests, so bishops are free to determine their own criteria.
“If there’s only one allegation on the priest, we’ll note it, we’ll record it and keep it in the file, and if a subsequent allegation comes in, that priest will be moved on to the list,” said Lawlor F. Quinlan III, a lawyer for the diocese.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.