The alleged victim, an Orange County, Calif. man, accuses Liguori of abusing him in 1969 at the Cardinal Farley Military Academy in Rhinebeck, N.Y., according to a release from the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
Liguori is a member of the Christian Brothers, and it was the religious order’s bankruptcy case, filed last year as the Christian Brothers assets were being drained by sex abuse cases, that opened the window for the case to emerge, said Joelle Casteix,western regional director for SNAP. This religious order has been rife with sex abuse scandals everywhere they’ve gone,” Casteix said.
Joseph George, the Sacramento-based attorney for the alleged victim said the victim had been abused in “a couple of isolated incidents” when he was 16 years old and attending the school.
Liguori, the attorney said, was a faculty member at the school, but served as a a “sort of a mentor” to the victim.
George said the alleged victim he represents first reported the abuse in 2008. At the time, the Christian Brothers claimed the allegations could not be substantiated. Still, he said, the order’s officials at first said they would pay for the man’s therapy.
“Then they got into a dispute with the therapist,” he said. The order wanted the victim to see the therapist once a week rather than two or three times, he said.
Iona College officials said in a statement that they could not comment on the legal claim because they had not seen it, and referred questions to Steve Mangione, spokesman for the Edmund Rice Christian Brothers North America.
“Our heartfelt sympathy and prayers are in support of any victim of sex abuse and their family,” reads the Iona statement, from college spokeswoman Dawn Insanalli. “The College is not part of the Edmund Rice Christian Brothers North America and is in no way connected to their bankruptcy filing and related allegations.” Mangione had no immediate comment.
Liguori, who is now the associate vice president and executive director for Fordham University’s Westchester campus, was unavailable for comment. Grant Grastorf, academic operations administrator on the campus said Liguori is out of town and unreachable until July 30.
Fordham spokesman Bob Howe had no immediate comment.“We’re just finding this out ourselves,” he said.Liguori retired from Iona College last year after leading the school for 17 years and was replaced by Joseph Nyre, the school’s first lay leader.George supplied The Journal News with a letter from a Christian Brothers official following the initial reports of abuse by Liguori. It said that an investigator for the order had interviewed a dozen former students, teachers and administrators at the military academy.
“Based on the information gathered as a result of this investigation it was not possible to substantiate your allegation,” the letter reads.
“I can assure you, however,” it continues, “that we have developed and implemented policies and procedures designed to create safe environments which protect minors in all our ministry sites.
”Statutes of limitations would likely bar any lawsuit at this point, but the bankruptcy case, filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan, gives creditors and others with claims against the order an opportunity to file their claims, said Casteix and George. The claim deadline is Aug. 1, SNAP said.
The Christian Brothers order filed for bankruptcy last year, after it had agreed, in recent years, to pay tens of millions of dollars to sex-abuse victims, and while it still faced dozens of claims in the Seattle area and Canada.
In a court filing, Brother Kevin Griffith, vice president of the Christian Brothers’ Institute, said the lawsuits are draining the order’s “not unlimited financial resources” and that the order “needs a breathing spell from this Court to resolve the claims asserted by the plaintiffs in the lawsuits, as well as to liquidate assets in an orderly fashion to satisfy legitimate claims.”
No comments:
Post a Comment