Former Albany bishop, “in shockingly frank deposition,” admits moving criminal abusers from parish to parish

… acknowledged cover ups, did not report to police

Most American bishops simply lie when they are asked if they reported known child abusers to the police or if they moved them from parish to parish.

The most egregious was the former Cardinal Bernard Law of the archdiocese of Boston who was accused by the Boston Globe of doing so after denying what the Globe had learned through its investigations. 

Knowing that these priests were abusers, Law and others simply moved them from one parish to the next, and while hierarchy like the pope in Rome and his underlings knew of this, they did nothing. 

Finally, one bishop is admitting his complicity, perhaps knowing that he will not be able to enter heaven without cleansing himself of these sins.

Albany deposition

The deposition of Bishop Howard Howard occurred in 2021, and it is shocking on a number of levels. First, that he acknowledge his guilt. Second, that it took so long for him to do so. 

America magazine reported this today about the deposition that was taken about a year ago,

In testimony conducted over four days in April 2021, Bishop Howard Hubbard, the former leader of the Diocese of Albany, N.Y., described in unusually frank terms how he moved diocesan priests who had been accused of molesting children in and out of treatment centers and back into ministry. He admitted that the transfers were consistently made without informing local police, families of abuse victims or Catholics in Albany’s parishes, where the men were reassigned.

Bishop Hubbard testified that parishioners were told that their pastors had been removed for “treatment” with no further explanation.

Bishop Hubbard said that in instances when priests admitted to him that they had committed abuse, he did not report this to Albany police. In his testimony, he explained that he was not a mandated reporter and believed that transferring priest abusers into treatment was a sufficient response.

“I don’t think the law then or even now requires me to [report admissions of abuse],” said Bishop Hubbard. “Would I do it now, yes. But did I do it then, no.”

Kevin Clarke, “In shockingly frank deposition, former bishop admits moving 

alleged abusers from treatment to ministry,” America, April 4, 2022

What is shocking is that he still does not think that he had an obligation to report criminals who happened to be priests to the police. That is appalling. 

In fact, Hubbard said this in the deposition,

"Bishop, why didn’t you, after he admitted to you having committed the felony of child sexual abuse, at his lips to your ears, why didn’t you call up the police and say, ‘I have a priest that just admitted a crime to me’?” 

Hubbard’s answer: “Because I was not a mandated reporter. I don’t think the law then or even now requires me to do it.”

Albany Times Union, Editorial, “Diocese must come clean,” March 29, 2022

Preventing scandal was major concern

The reality is that the bishops simply wanted to prevent the church from horrible public relations problems. They did not care for the young people who were abused,

Gerard McGlone, S.J., was struck by the frankness of Bishop Hubbard’s description of his personnel decisions during this period, which occurred decades before U.S. bishops met in Dallas to approve the Charter for Protection of Children and Young People in 2002. That document has governed the institutional response to abuse allegations in most dioceses since.

A survivor of abuse himself, Father McGlone is a senior research fellow at the Berkley Center at Georgetown University and previously served as the associate director for protection of minors for the Conference of Major Superiors of Men. He said that the deposition makes it clear that preventing scandal was Bishop Hubbard’s primary concern. The transcript, he said, portrayed “an utter disregard for the welfare of survivors and their families.”

“And that has been, in my opinion, the main failure [of U.S. bishops] of the past 20 years and the main failure prior to that,” he added.

Father McGlone noted a persistent focus “on policies and procedures and not on accompaniment, as Pope Francis has done.”

“It has shed, again, a light on the fact that the church does not accompany survivors from the beginning and has abandoned them.”

Kevin Clarke, America, April 4, 2022

Frankness and honesty have been absent from the Catholic hierarchy response to the abuse. That is appalling. 

Survivors are secondary

This has been the most egregious scandal in the history of the Roman Catholic Church, and it reached to the levels of two popes. 

However, the bishops have often escaped the wrath of the people,

Depositions from lawsuits related to the abuse crisis have been released before—Cardinal Bernard Law’s 2002 testimony comes to mind, Father McGlone said. But he said that “Law was not frank at all, so this is a major change, and I think it is an important window into at least one person’s response.”

“The deposition really does reveal to us how survivors have always been secondary to the response of the church and continue to be so,” Father McGlone said. “And unless we put survivors at the center of the focus of our response, we will continue to repeat this horrendous criminal activity.”

A statement released by [Attorney Jeff] Anderson’s office on March 25 charged that Bishop Hubbard “used the same playbook that countless other Bishops have employed to evade accountability and protect perpetrators at the expense of children.”

“Hearing those motives [for] albeit historical decisions stated so boldly in this day and age is really still a shock,” said Patricia Gomez, a trustee for Voice of the Faithful, a lay-directed church reform movement founded in the aftermath of the Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” team’s exposé on the abuse of children. Ms. Gomez serves on the organization’s Protection of Children Working Group.

Kevin Clarke, America, April 4, 2022