WESTCHESTER (NY)
Daily Voice Plus
July 3, 2019
By Bill Heltzel
The estate of an Ulster County man who killed himself earlier this year is asking a court to compel the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers to identify and preserve records of a priest who allegedly sexually assaulted the decedent for eight years when he was a boy.
Catherine Gallagher, the sister of Ralph “Chip” Gallagher, petitioned Westchester Supreme Court on June 7 to appoint a neutral party to preserve records, identify potential witnesses and notify others who may have come into contact with the priest when they were children.
“The Maryknolls take these claims very seriously,” attorney John P. Hannigan, of Bleakley Platt responded, “and we’re looking into assembling the facts.”
He later characterized the demands as a “thinly veiled effort” by Catherine Gallagher’s attorney, Barbara Hart of Lowey Dannenberg in White Plains, “to identify potential clients.” That would be an improper use of legal procedure, he stated in a court filing.
The Maryknolls, a Roman Catholic religious order based in Ossining, is primarily a missionary organization that combats poverty, provides health care, runs orphanages and schools, and advances social justice issues in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Ralph Gallagher was born in Mount Kisco and grew up in Chappaqua. When he died in January, he was living in Phoenicia, where he was a self-employed carpenter.
The petition concerns Edward Flanagan, who joined the Maryknolls 1956 as a religious brother, was ordained as a priest in 1964, voluntarily withdrew from the order in 1971 and died in 2016.
In the 1960s, he was assigned to the Church of St. John and St. Mary in Chappaqua.
Flanagan had been a guest in the Gallagher’s Chappaqua home over the years and family members attended his ordination into the priesthood.
Gallagher was first assaulted in 1962, according to the petition, when he was 4 years old. The alleged assaults continued through 1970, when he was 11, and included an incident in the Bahamas.
Flanagan had received significant psychological counseling, the petition states, yet the religious order moved him from position to position and allowed him to continue working with families and children.
The petition does not explain how it is known that Flanagan assaulted Gallagher.
BishopAccountability.org, does not list Flanagan on its database of U.S. Catholic clergy accused of sexually abusing children.
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