ALBANY (NY)
Times Union [Albany NY]
June 18, 2024
By Brendan J Lyons
Warren County and the United Methodist Church have agreed to pay $875,000 to settle a lawsuit filed on behalf of a man who was sexually abused as a child.
Warren County and the United Methodist Church have agreed to pay $875,000 to settle a sexual abuse lawsuit filed on behalf of a man who was sexually abused as a child nearly 50 years ago by a former minister who had also been the boy’s foster parent.
The former pastor, 82-year-old Richard A. Reynolds, is a Guilderland resident who previously operated a professional clown business for more than two decades, including at area children’s events, after his retirement from the Methodist church 25 years ago, according to his online profile and attorneys in the case.
In at least two lawsuits filed under New York’s Child Victims Act, Reynolds has been accused of molesting numerous boys in the 1970s and 1980s, when he was assigned to North Creek Methodist Church in Warren County and also the First United Methodist Church in Gloversville.
New York’s Child Victims Act temporarily lifted the statute of limitations to allow alleged victims of sexual abuse to file once time-barred claims against their abusers or the institutions that harbored them.
In one of the cases that recently settled, Reynolds had allegedly sexually abused the victim, who was 11 when it began, while working as a foster parent for the Warren County Department of Social Services. Under the settlement, Warren County paid $750,000 and the church paid $125,000.
Officials with Warren County declined to comment. The United Methodist Church did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Vincent T. Nappo, an attorney for the plaintiff in the case, said the county had “failed to supervise and protect our client for years on end, leaving our client vulnerable to unthinkable acts of sexual abuse by the very adult charged with his protection. No child should ever have to endure such trauma and abuse.”
Nappo added that, “it is unclear when the church first received reports of Reynolds’ sexual abuse of children, but it appears the first victim came forward after (our client’s) abuse ended.”
“The church sent Reynolds for sexual deviancy treatment, and then allowed Reynolds back into its congregation to continue serving in leadership positions where he would have access to children,” Nappo continued. “The church never reported Reynolds to law enforcement, and in fact, pleaded with the victim’s family to keep the abuse silent out of fear of bad publicity.”
In an interview Monday, Reynolds was asked several times by a reporter if he denies the sexual abuse allegations or wanted to comment on them.
“No, that was a long, long, long, long time ago,” he said, adding that he closed down his clown business when the coronavirus pandemic struck.
“You’re going to write an article, which is not going to look good for me, is that right?” Reynolds added. “Well, that was a long, long time ago, and I’m 82 now, and I’m getting a tinge of Parkinson’s (disease) I think.”
In February, attorneys for Warren County filed a motion asking a judge to issue an order compelling Reynolds to answer more than 300 questions that he had declined to answer during a pretrial deposition. They said Reynolds had claimed “a privilege against self-incrimination.”
“Reynolds not only declined to answer routine questions which have no causal link to any criminal element of any crime, regarding his knowledge of people and places, but claimed a privilege for the impossibility that the (state) Legislature may statutorily revive criminal liability by extending the statute of limitations,” the county’s attorneys added.
Cynthia S. LaFave, a Guilderland attorney whose firm represents hundreds of clients with claims under New York’s Child Victims Act, filed another case involving Reynolds in Fulton County, where he had been a pastor with a Methodist church in Gloversville.
In that case, which was filed against the United Methodist Church, Reynolds was accused of sexually abusing a 7-year-old boy beginning in 1979 and continuing until 1987, when the boy turned 15. The alleged sexual abuse took place in the church’s parsonage and also in a motor home during church-sponsored trips, according to court records. The case settled but the terms were not publicly disclosed.
“All the money in the world cannot make up for the suffering of the survivors of child sexual abuse. However, the more the public knows, the more we can protect the children,” LaFave said. “Based on the allegations of the case I handled, and the other case filed under the Child Victims Act, including allegations of others who never filed suit, it is my opinion that Richard Reynolds should never be anywhere near children, ever.”
In the Warren County case, the victim entered the Warren County foster care system and was placed with Reynolds, then a lead pastor at a North Creek church. His attorneys said the church apparently owned the foster home where the abuse took place. The victim was abused from 1978 until 1985, when he graduated from high school.
In the late 1980s, the attorneys said, the mother of another alleged victim wrote a four-page letter to church leaders saying that Reynolds had admitted to sexually abusing her son and that she believed there were more child victims.
According to the attorneys for the plaintiff in the Warren County case, a leader with the Methodist church “responded to the mother’s letter citing excerpts from the Book of Discipline and told her he intended on speaking with Reynolds and that it would be helpful if her concerns remained a private matter.”
The church later allowed Reynolds to resume his duties as a pastor following the sexual deviancy treatment, the attorneys said.