BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News
August 16, 2019
By Dan Herbeck
There were 105 Child Victims Act lawsuits against religious organizations in Western New York in the first two days those cases could be filed.
But only two of them targeted religious organizations that are not Catholic.
One lawsuit was filed against a Lutheran organization and a former Lutheran religion teacher who allegedly raped and molested a 13-year-old girl at First Trinity Lutheran Church in the Town of Tonawanda from 1978 until 1981. The other was filed against Buffalo’s Temple Beth Zion, alleging that a Hebrew tutor there repeatedly molested a 12-year-old female student during a nine-month period in 1970.
Ninety-eight percent of the 105 lawsuits against religious organizations in five Western New York counties named as defendants the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo, priests and other individuals and institutions associated with the diocese.
Despite that, Nora Kovach, 54, who accused her former Lutheran religious education teacher, Bruce Arlen Connolly, in her lawsuit, said her case shows that child sexual abuse is not just a problem in the Catholic Church.
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