Buffalo Diocese adds two priests to sex abuser list; total now at 80

By Jay Tokasz
Buffalo News
January 7, 2019

https://bit.ly/2TxZ06j

The Rev. Fabian Maryanski, pictured in 2010. The Diocese of Buffalo announced it has added Maryanski to its list of priests who have been credibly accused of sexual misconduct with children.

The Buffalo Diocese has added the names of two priests to its list of clergy that it says have been credibly accused of child sexual abuse.

The Rev. Fabian J. Maryanski and the Rev. Mark J. Wolski are now included with 78 other diocesan and religious order priests that diocese officials acknowledged in 2018 had “substantiated claims” against them.

The diocese announced the update in a tweet late Monday morning.

A woman who said Maryanski repeatedly sexually abused her beginning in the 1980s when she was 15 had been urging the diocese for months to add Maryanski to its list of abusive priests. The diocese put out its first list of offending priests last March, with 42 names.

Maryanski, 77, was removed in May from active ministry, but the diocese didn’t add his name in November when it last released an updated list of 36 more offending priests.

The list now stands at 80 priests, and diocese officials have said that more names could be added.

Stephanie McIntyre, who said Maryanski abused her for years when she was a teenage parishioner at St. Patrick Church in Barker, received a $400,000 settlement offer in December from the diocese as compensation for the alleged abuse.

Following the diocese's announcement Monday, she encouraged any other victims of Maryanski to come forward.

“Please do not be ashamed and do not keep this painful secret any longer,” said McIntyre. “You did nothing wrong. He did, and he will no longer be able to use the power of his collar and his victims' belief in God to abuse and damage anyone's soul again."

Maryanski admitted in an interview with The News that he had sex with McIntyre, but not until she was in her 20s. He denied having any sexual contact with her when she was a teenager.

Diocese officials allowed Maryanski to work in parishes for more than two decades after he was first accused by McIntyre in 1995 of having sexual contact with her.

Maryanski was listed by the diocese as absent on leave from 1996 to 2000. He later served as a parochial vicar at St. Philip the Apostle Church in Cheektowaga and as pastor of St. Andrew Church in Sloan. Although retired since 2014, Maryanski was still celebrating Masses earlier this year, primarily at Nativity Church in Clarence, when The News published a story about McIntyre's allegations.

Wolski, former pastor of SS. Peter & Paul Church in Hamburg, who at one time served on the Diocesan Review Board that investigates sexual abuse complaints against priests, was suspended by the diocese in May.

Wolski, 76, was retired since 2012 but assisting at various parishes.

The diocese forwarded the cases against Maryanski and Wolski in December to the Vatican for further review.