Former Schenectady priest sued over alleged abuse

ALBANY (NY)
The Daily Gazette

August 26, 2019

By Stephen Williams

Pastor allegedly lived with woman, fathered child

A one-time Schenectady priest is accused of secretly living with a woman and sexually abusing her children, in one of the two dozen Child Victims’ Act cases filed in recent days against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany.

The five grown children of Edith Steve filed the lawsuit Aug. 15 against the diocese, Bishop-Emeritis Howard J. Hubbard, and Francis P. Melfe, who was a priest in the Albany diocese from his ordination in 1954 until he resigned in 1979. His final assignment was a decade at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Schenectady.

Melfe, who was removed from the priesthood in 2012, has been on a diocese list of priests credibly accused of child abuse since 2015.

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