Four young men have reached a $27.5 million settlement with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and an afterschool program following claims that a male religious education teacher sexually abused them as children.
The settlement is one of the largest ever awarded by the church to individual victims of abuse, reports the New York Times.
The victims, now between the ages of 19 and 21, said they were repeatedly abused by Angelo Serrano, 67, a catechist and organizer of the religious education programs at St. Lucy’s-St. Patrick’s Church in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. The young men said the abuse took place between 2003 and 2009, when they were between the ages of eight and twelve. They added that the abuse occurred inside the church, in Serrano’s apartment behind the church, and at the afterschool program, which is affiliated with the parish.
One of the boys reported the abuse to his mother, who reported it to the police. Subsequently, Serrano was arrested in 2009 and pleaded guilty two years later to first-degree sexual conduct charges. Currently, he is serving a 15-year sentence at the Fishkill Correctional Facility.
The pastors at the church during the time of the reported abuse, Rev. Stephen P. Lynch and Rev. Frank Shannon, were named as co-defendants in the case.
According to the Times, Justice Loren Baily-Schiffman of Kings County Supreme Court wrote in her 2017 order that the “record is clear that Lynch and Shannon had knowledge that for years Serrano often had several boys, including plaintiff, sleep over at his apartment.”
“In fact, both Lynch and Shannon testified that they visited Serrano on numerous occasions when young boys were present,” the judge wrote.
Lynch testified in a deposition that he saw Serrano kiss an eight- or nine-year-old boy on the mouth and inappropriately embrace him.
Beatrice Ponnelle, a church secretary who shared an office with Serrano, also testified that young boys would come into the office and do their homework while sitting on Serrano’s lap. Additionally, though a church rule prohibited children from being alone in an office with a staff member, Serrano was often the only adult left in the office with the young boys, she said.
The Dorothy Bennett Mercy Center, the afterschool program located next to the church, has agreed to pay about one-third of the multi-million dollar settlement. According to the Times report, each of the four victims will receive $6,875,000.
Earlier in September, ABC News reported that New York attorney general Barbara Dale Underwood subpoenaed all Roman Catholic dioceses in the state as part of an investigation into alleged sexual abuse by clergy and cover-ups of the alleged abuse by church leaders:
In New Jersey, a special hotline was launched last week as the state’s attorney general, Gurbir Grewal, formed a new task force to investigate allegations of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy and attempts to cover up the alleged abuse:
The state investigations are put in motion in the wake of the release of a Pennsylvania grand jury report alleging more than 1,000 victims of sexual abuse – most of them boys – by Roman Catholic clergy in that state during a 70-year period.
The Pennsylvania report was followed by the release of a letter, written by Archbishop Carlo Viganò, the Vatican’s former ambassador to the United States, who linked the sexual abuse scandal, as well as ensuing cover-ups by some bishops, to an extensive “homosexual network” within the church.
In his letter, Viganò charged that, as the papal nuncio to the United States, he personally informed Pope Francis of disgraced Archbishop Theodore McCarrick’s longstanding sexual abuse of priests, seminarians, and minors on June 23, 2013 – three months after the College of Cardinals had elected Francis as pope. The pontiff, nevertheless, “continued to cover for [McCarrick],” Viganò said.
The former nuncio wrote that, despite being aware of McCarrick’s abusive history, Pope Francis “did not take into account the sanctions that Pope Benedict had imposed on [McCarrick] and made him his trusted counselor.”
Viganò also attributed a number of important papal appointments in the United States, including those of Cardinals Blase Cupich in Chicago and Tobin in Newark, to McCarrick’s influence over Pope Francis.
In his letter, Viganò has called upon Pope Francis to resign his office. The pope, however, has doubled down on his claim that both the accusations and the calls for accountability are the work of Satan.
“Among us is the great accuser, who always goes to accuse us before God, in order to destroy us,” the pope said. “Satan: He is the great accuser.”
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