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.
Asked why he still refrained from reporting potential criminal acts even if it were not mandated by canon law, Bishop Hubbard said, “Because of the reasons you cited before, the reason of scandal and respect for the priesthood.”
“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.”
Bishop Hubbard made the admissions about diocesan policies during a deposition taken last year as part of a response to dozens of claims filed under New York’s Child Victims Act, the “look back” law that allowed lawsuits to proceed after the lifting of the statute of limitations on abuse allegations for one year. Hundreds of people have sued the Albany diocese over sexual abuse they say they endured as children, sometimes decades ago.
“It reeks of a common response, and I think that raises other...issues in regard to who knew what, when and the extent and level of the knowledge” about the problem of clerical abuse of children, he said.
He added that after he attempted twice to reach out to other victims of abuse, it seemed to merely traumatize the adult men he managed to reach, so he made no further effort as bishop to seek out other survivors. Most of the policies and practices he described began to change in 1993, Bishop Hubbard said, and then they were abandoned completely under new standards established by the charter in 2002.
Father McGlone said that reading the “horror of that transcript” did not necessarily open old wounds since “the wounds aren’t old for a survivor.”
“It never goes away,” he said. “My wounds are my wounds. They’re not old. They’re simply omnipresent. They sometimes become less raw, but they’re always there.”
In shockingly frank deposition, former bishop admits moving alleged abusers from treatment to ministry | America Magazine
Asked why he still refrained from reporting potential criminal acts even if it were not mandated by canon law, Bishop Hubbard said, “Because of the reasons you cited before, the reason of scandal and respect for the priesthood.”
“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.”
Bishop Hubbard made the admissions about diocesan policies during a deposition taken last year as part of a response to dozens of claims filed under New York’s Child Victims Act, the “look back” law that allowed lawsuits to proceed after the lifting of the statute of limitations on abuse allegations for one year. Hundreds of people have sued the Albany diocese over sexual abuse they say they endured as children, sometimes decades ago.
“It reeks of a common response, and I think that raises other...issues in regard to who knew what, when and the extent and level of the knowledge” about the problem of clerical abuse of children, he said.
He added that after he attempted twice to reach out to other victims of abuse, it seemed to merely traumatize the adult men he managed to reach, so he made no further effort as bishop to seek out other survivors. Most of the policies and practices he described began to change in 1993, Bishop Hubbard said, and then they were abandoned completely under new standards established by the charter in 2002.
Father McGlone said that reading the “horror of that transcript” did not necessarily open old wounds since “the wounds aren’t old for a survivor.”
“It never goes away,” he said. “My wounds are my wounds. They’re not old. They’re simply omnipresent. They sometimes become less raw, but they’re always there.”
In shockingly frank deposition, former bishop admits moving alleged abusers from treatment to ministry | America Magazine