Victim Settles with Buffalo Diocese Over Alleged Priest Sex Assault
Aug 16, 2012
Written by WGRZ Web Staff
BUFFALO, NY – An attorney for a woman who claimed a Buffalo priest sexually assaulted her says the woman and the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo have come to a settlement.
Father Secundo Casarotto was removed from St. Anthony of Padua church in early January after an investigation into inappropriate contact with a female parishioner in 2009. The 70-year-old had been a priest there for more than 25 years.
Attorney Adam Horowitz announced the settlement with the Diocese of Buffalo and the Scalabrinians prior to the filing of a federal lawsuit.
Channel 2 News obtained a copy of the police report filed in June. In it, the alleged victim, who’s in her 30s, says the sexual assault took place in the bedroom of the St. Anthony of Padua parish rectory in August of 2009.
The victim, who is being identified only as “Jane Doe,” issued this statement:
To the People of Buffalo, parishioners of St. Anthony Padua, and of course victims of sexual abuse who have not found the courage to come forward and report your abuser:
I hope I have given you some strength to report it and seek therapy.
I decided to settle my case, but it does not make what happen to me right in any way. I hope a good lesson will have been learned from my situation. Things like this must be acted on promptly and taken seriously!
I too respected Father Secondo. However, he violated my mind and body at a time when I was most vulnerable and sought his guidance. As a Catholic I struggled very deeply, and the silence was killing me. The secret I had to hide from the people I loved most, hurt so much. Because of my catholic upbringing, I thought I could just forgive him, and move on. I was raised to respect adults, the elderly and priests especially. I was taught that they were holy men of God, however, after what the Father did to me, I learned he was no holy man. However, we do need to pray for him. I hope he gets some therapy, and realizes what he did to me and the other victim was totally wrong.
Today my spirituality has been greatly affected. I have a hard time believing priest anymore when they preach. I continue to have flashbacks of what happened to me. I believe that God himself did not do this to me, nor would want this to happen to me or any others. The bible clearly states God is against sexual assault. Sexual assault is a sin against god and victim. When the abuse first happened to me, I felt so numb. I felt like my power was taken from me. I am very thankful for my attorney Adam Horowitz for being there for me.
Just when I was about ready to give up, he took my call and assured me he would be with me every step of the way. I thank him for all his hard work and long hours working with me on this matter.
Also my counselor believed in me and therapy has been a very important part of my healing process. I don’t have a secret anymore, I don’t need to be silent, I can talk about it, and people believe in me. I wanted to press criminal charges but was not allowed to proceed. I cooperated 100%, but I was told I did not have enough evidence for a criminal prosecution. All I can say is another victim came forward after hearing my story. I think the system needs to start taking victims of sexual abuse more seriously. The system makes it too easy for victims not to want to come forward out of fear they will not be taking seriously, and in my mindwe let abusers continue to abuse again and again. The law did afford me to bring a civil suit forward. I needed to know that I myself did all I possibly could to bring more awareness of clergy abuse, and how much telling the truth really means!
THANK YOU
Jane Doe
PDF Document: Press Release from attorney Adam Horowitz (WARNING: Explicit Content) www.wgrz.com/assetpool/documents/120816042950_sexual_assault_victim_pdf.pdf
I maintain my original and well founded suspicions about this entire matter. I knew Fr. Casarotto for over a decade prior to my leaving Buffalo and he was an exemplary priest in every respect. His health is significantly compromised and I find such allegations to be very difficult to comprehend.
Since there is no admission and the District Attorney told the media that there was absolutely no evidence to support such allegations and that the “victim” refused to cooperate with the DA’s office, the news that a “settlement” was reached ( which proves absolutely nothing since so many “settlements” paid out by dioceses are the result of pathetic episcopal responses to false allegations in the first place ) is hardly isurprising.
Careful attention to the garden variety sob story the “victim” provides, of course anonymously!, and the fact that the “heroic” lawyer who represented her is engaged in a practice largely dedicated to suing Catholic priests and dioceses makes this appear, at least to me, as just one more successful shakedown operation. A
dd in the facts that: (a) Fr. Casarotto had bitter clerical enemies within the Diocese of Buffalo, people who did not like the fact that he fought to restore Tradition, offered a weekly Latin Mass, and offered Latin Masses on Holy Days of Obligation as well, as well as providing Traditional form baptisms, confirmations and Requiem Masses in Latin, and (b) that the real estate on which the magnificent church of St. Anthony is located on hugely valuable downtown property – ideal for a lucrative city parking lot! – I think you can see why my skepticism remains very high.
Please continue to pray for Fr. Casarotto. He merits it and I think he is completely innocent.
Since I know Fr. Casarotto and am following these grievous events closely, please bear with my insistence on updating even relatively lesser matters in the case.
I am awaiting permission to relate what I believe will be overwhelming testimony as to the absolute innocence of Fr. Casarotto.
[As you requested]
Diocese settles sex assault complaint
Woman’s accusation led to second case
By Jay Tokasz
Buffalo News Staff Reporter
Published: August 16, 2012, 3:37 PM
Updated: August 16, 2012, 11:31 PM
www.buffalonews.com/city/article1007697.ece
The Catholic Diocese of Buffalo has reached a financial settlement with a 37-year-old woman who accused a priest of sexually assaulting her inside the rectory of a downtown Buffalo church in 2009, according to the woman’s lawyer.
The incident led to the removal in January of the Rev. Secondo Casarotto, longtime pastor of St. Anthony Church.
The settlement means the woman will not file a lawsuit in federal court, said her lawyer, Adam Horowitz.
Horowitz would not disclose the monetary terms of the settlement, although he said those terms were not confidential.
“The dollar amount was never the most important thing to her,” Horowitz said Thursday.
In a statement, the diocese confirmed the settlement agreement and also declined to disclose the amount.
The woman, who lives in Canada, was most interested in holding accountable the priest, the diocese and the priest’s religious order, the Scalabrinian Fathers, Horowitz added.
“She feels like she was able to expose him for what he did,” he said.
The cost of the settlement was to be split between the diocese and the missionaries of St. Charles Borromeo, otherwise known as the Scalabrinian Fathers, a worldwide order of clerics who have a provincial office on Staten Island.
In a prepared statement provided by her attorney, the woman said she hoped she helped give victims of sexual abuse who had not reported the abuse “some strength to report it and seek therapy.”
“As a Catholic, I struggled very deeply, and the silence was killing me,” the woman said. “The secret I had to hide from the people I loved most hurt so much. Because of my Catholic upbringing, I thought I could just forgive him and move on.”
Casarotto, who had been at St. Anthony Church for about 25 years, was placed on administrative leave in January with little explanation.
A few days after Casarotto’s removal, diocesan officials confirmed that then-Bishop Edward U. Kmiec had recently received a letter from Horowitz regarding the allegation against the priest.
The woman also called Buffalo police about her allegations in March 2011, although she did not make a formal statement until three months later – and nearly two years after the alleged groping.
Authorities didn’t charge Casarotto because they had no corroborating evidence, Erie County District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III said back in January.
When confronted by police, the priest acknowledged sexual contact with the woman and said that it was consensual, according to the district attorney.
But Horowitz maintained that a detective who worked on the case told him that Casarotto admitted to sexually attacking the woman, then backtracked and contended that it was consensual contact.
The woman claimed that Casarotto was giving her a tour of the parish, and when they arrived at his living quarters, he threw her on the bed, pulled down her shorts and fondled her before exposing himself.
The allegations shocked the small, traditionally Italian parish where Casarotto, now 70, was a well-liked pastor.
They also prompted a second woman to step forward with a complaint about the Italian-born priest.
The second woman accused Casarotto of making unwanted sexual advances in August 2008, while she was alone with the priest in her home in a Buffalo suburb.
The second accuser told Horowitz she had contacted the diocese previously. However, a spokesman for the diocese said the woman’s complaint never reached the appropriate diocesan officials.
Casarotto can no longer function as a priest in the Buffalo Diocese and has returned to the Scalabrinian order.
“We trust that the Scalabrinian Fathers will do the right thing and keep him out of any public ministry around women,” said Horowitz.
I am preparing a summary paraphrasing key facts about this non-case which were never reported in the news stories and which absollutely vindicate Fr. Casarotta.
If my source, an impeccable one, gives permission, I will post the summary here.
I think it’s very sad that Tom felt the need to post this article. GPM has hit the nail on the head perfectly. Pray for Father, pray for all priests.
Eternal High Priest, have mercy on your priests.
Acolytus, good friend, Tom expressed views sympathetic with our own support for Father back when this horrible injustice first erupted in the Buffalo media last January.
Tom provides comprehensive news coverage in his yeoman service on this forum and it is actually valuable that folks who originally took interest in this case can now see how it has been so tragically resolved. Perhaps, with the truth now coming out as to how a very fine, moral and hardworking priest who loves the Latin Mass is treated by his own diocesan and religious order superiors, a public uprising against this sort of treachery will result.
HAVING SECURED PERMISSION FROM MY FRIEND, HERE IS WHAT I SENT TO A SELECTED NUMBER OF CORRESPONDENTS:
I am sending this as a matter of record concerning my own opinion that Fr. Secondo Casarotta is an innocent man, grievously and shamefully accused of an act he never commited. And, for which, he is suffering unjustly having been torn from his parish without even the slightest concern for him or the two decades worth of friendships he established among parishoners and neighbors who, to this day, have great respect and affection for his tireless pastorship.
The following is a paraphrase of a communication I have received from a friend of Father’s and mine.
In fact, this friend has known and interacted with Father much longer and far more than I ever did.
Lastly, my friend is an exemplary Catholic of impeccable credentials and deservedly enjoys an excellent reputation in his community….
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
PARAPHRASED COMMENTS ( WITH ADDED COMMENTS BY ME )
The original police report never had any information about the accuser other than her name,There was no address or phone number to get back in touch with the accuser. There was also no time of day listed for the alleged attack. ( My friend added that ” I guess she can’t remember if it was morning, noon or night. ” )
She also declined a victim’s rights brochure from the police. ( My friend added that, “Apparently she didn’t need the pamphlet since she was not a victim.” )
The detailed accusation in the paper was never listed in the police report. In fact what was stated in the police report was totally different than what was stated in the paper.
My friend indicated that a retired Buffalo Police officer said that he spoke with the officers closest to the case and they knew she was lying from the beginning.
Also, to this day Father has never been told the name of the supposed 2nd accuser. ( My friend, as do I, does not believe there ever was one. )
Father Secondo told my friend that he never admitted to anything and regarding his admission that it was consensual he stated that he could not have given consent to something that never happened.
A local Buffalo news report (WVIB Channel 4) “Lawyer says priest admits sex assault,” January 18, 2012 ( www.wivb.com/dpp/news/local/priest-on-administrative-leave ) includes a video version with a photograph of the 2011 police report at 1:10. I froze and enlarged the video at that point. The report lists the alleged victim’s name (which is blurred out) but no specific address (only “NY”). There is a date and time given for the alleged 2009 incident, the latter of which I cannot make out. The description section says, “sexual misconduct” and “forcible touching of another’s sexual intimate parts.” At the bottom of the report is an additional (or added? because it is in a different type style) description, which is more explicit and comparable in content to the press reports.
The second complaint abounds with ambiguity and (concerning an unnamed employee) with ignorance, incompentency or outright mendacity, as the Ann Free Spirit blog reports on February 1, 2012 ( annfreespirit.over-blog.com/article-a-second-woman-accuses-priest-of-sexual-misconduct-98353375.html ):
Since we cannot go back and retrieve all the information which was posted on AQ about this matter earlier this year, I have to rely on memory.
1. District Attorney Sedita, who rightly enjoys a solid reputation in Buffalo as a tough, fair and highly competent prosecutor, commented in the Buffalo media that there was simply no case. No evidence. And a thoroughly uncooperative “victim” who would not give his office any information.
2. Add to that my most trustworthy friend’s comment concerning his discussion with Buffalo police officers who informed him that they knew the “victim” was lying at the outset.
3. Add to that the fact that there was no indictment, no prosecution and no case ever brought to a courtroom for either indictment or trial and you have what we see here: Elimination of an unwanted tradition-friendly priest in a liberal diocese by means of false accusation and intimidation under the aegis of “obedience” to his superiors.
4. Finally, most significantly, the subject priest, Fr. Casarotto, is a man of advanced age with multiple serious health conditions. From my own decade of speaking with him inside and outside the confessional, I am convinced that his moral standards are unquestionable and his personal faithfulness to Church doctrine equally unquestionable.
As it is the case that anyone can, for whatever reason, claim “victim” status and bring down the house on top of anyone else, given the “right” ( i.e., conscienceless ) legal representation and enough evil motivation to harm an innocent party, then it is entirely correct to withhold belief in what the media reports indicate and entirely Catholic in spirit to weigh this case in favor of Fr. Casarotto.
Unfortunately, that is the exact opposite of how diocesan officials looked at it.
The more I hear of this story the fishier it sounds. I’ve had Fr. Casarotto in my prayers basically daily since this was first posted on the old AQ.
*
I’m a Buffalonian myself having been confirmed by Bishop Edward D. Head back in 1979. We didn’t really learn the Catholic faith back then in Novus Ordo land and now only my parents, myself, and my children are even Catholic. If only the shepherds would return to saving souls. My old church recently changed their name to Blessed John Paul II Catholic Faith Community. I really hope at least someone there is in communion with the true Catholic faith,but it sounds like it’s still moving farther away.
*
Do you know where exactly Fr. Casarotto is? Can you contact him? Fr. Marcel Guarnizo-gone; Fr. Secundo Casarotto- gone; who will be next? Yet the heretics and others are still in full communion and enjoying their cushy lifestyles. How long, oh Lord, how long?
The Buffalo Diocese was a petri dish for Modernists in the 80s and through the 90s.
It was pointed out to me 20 years ago that altar girls, liturgical dancing, etc. were first introduced in the Diocese so that the “watchers” could observe how John and Jane Pewsitter would react, before moving on to Rochester, Syracuse, etc. Just how true that statement was I cannot be sure. And, to be fair, the reported incidence of homo-priests ( sic! ) seemed quite low in Buffalo, comparatively. Although I have solid info that the bishop before Kmiec knew of and did zip about homos pretending to be priests and sharing apartments right in downtown Buffalo. How many were involved, I do not know.
From my own experience ( I lived in the Diocese all my life until last year ), Buffalo is just what people see: A dying city with a heavily Catholic history. The last heroic Bishop was H.E. Joseph Aloysius Burke, DD who confirmed me and for whom it was my privilege to serve Mass in the early 1960s. His successor, Bp. McNulty, literally underwent the torments of hell when the diocesan seminary faculty and some seminarians revolted in 1968 against Humanae Vitae. I’ve heard it said that that was what led to his death.
Since, the bishops have been nothing but a continuation of the succession of the East Coast Irish Mafia, with Kmiec ( an avowed anti-Trad ) the only non-Irishman in the crowd.
Frankly some church closings were inevitable. Buffalo, when I was very young, had nearly 1 million area residents, including the yet-to-explode suburbs. Today, you can go downtown for lunch and barely pass more than three cars on any of the main streets. Industry and industrious people pulled out and all that’s left are the elderly, a small contingent of youger professionals ( mostly medical ) and the Obama nation.
However, the manner and tone in which the closings took place left everyone completely upset. The ham-handed “nun” running the wrecking crew ops was famous for her duplicity and one after another, beautiful old churches were shuttered and the remaining flocks shuttled off to what were called “faith communities” but which appeared, architecturally, to be pieces of the Bflo/Niagara Airport that never quite made it over to Genessee St.
Perhaps that background will highlight why Fr. Casarotta was unique. He maintained a very active website to teach the history of the Italian immigrants, and many other immigrant groups as well, to everybody. He opened his absolute gem of a church to truly worthy cultural performances ( Baroque and Classical, much schola cantorum work, etc. ) and pounded into parishoners’ heads the great story of how it was that we all had such a beautiful church in which to pray and how many saints had prayed in it, too ( St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, Servant of God Fr. Nelson Baker, and the canonized founder of Fr. Casarotto’s order, the Scalabrinians ).
I think that drove the powers that be nuts. One day, they saw an opportunity to rid themselves of that troublesome priest – and they grabbed it. Period.
This is a truly heartrending story. Thank you, gpm, for telling it, and for defending this poor priest. The good Lord will reward him for his white martyrdom. I will keep him in my prayers. I suspect that there are many martyrs of this kind in the Church today.
I think it would take Randy Engels’ expert reporting skills to do justice to some of the stories, many like Fr. Casarotto’s.
Imagine: From childhood you dream of becoming a priest and many years later you are. Then, as was Fr. Casarotto, you are sent to America as a missionary to care for poor Italians who are looked down upon and struggle to make ends meet. You find that the little funds you can hand out at the parish door are woefully short, so you take a job cooking just to earn money to hand to the poor. Meanwhile, you hear confessions daily ( he did ), teach yourself Latin to offer the True Mass, attend to the constant demands of parishoners, teach yourself three more languages just to keep up with the other immigrants now pouring into your parish for help, go to meetings with your “brother priests” and end up being ridiculed for standing up for even the simplest traditions such as processions and little parades for saint’s feast days. You do this for 25 years and you build a family with hundreds of other families who truly respect, admire and love you for your endless work and constant smile.
Then some nameless woman decides she’s going to take you out.
Your bishop has you placed under house arrest and then you are secreted away to Italy because they can’t have you around anymore, can the?. Then they bring you back to NYC, strip you of your financial rights and show you a room and tell you to go sit there for the rest of your life – and shut up.
And not one soul you baptized, absolved, married or gave communion can even take your hand and say goodbye before you are whisked off on a plane for a crime you did not commit.
ultimately, who’s going to pay the Buffalo Bill?
The following is a letter to the reporter, Jay Tokasz, who wrote the scandalous hitpiece against Fr. Casarotto. The author is a prominent leader of the Buffalo Latin Mass community.
“Jay,
I presume that I am not the first one to contact you about your article in the Buffalo News on Father Casarotto and the Diocese of Buffalo’s settlement with the alleged sexual abuse victim.
I can’t understand how a professed Catholic can be a part of this smear attack on a Catholic priest. One that is obviously a lie.
98 percent of the people I have talked to concerning this matter don’t believe these accusations to be true. A lot of those people don’t even know him and they can see that he’s not guilty. I don’t know how you or your paper can be a part of this travesty.
The details that you reported in that article were unprecedented for shear shock reporting. I realize that your employer and it’s owner have a strong dislike for the Catholic Church but this story was a new low for the Buffalo News and Mr. Buffet.
I believe that a retraction is in order”