Brooklyn priest sexually abused woman who sought spiritual guidance: lawsuit

By James Fanelli
New York Daily News
June 26, 2017

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/brooklyn-priest-sexually-abused-woman-sought-spiritual-article-1.3277420

Father Andre Bain is accused of preying on a vulnerable parishioner and convincing her that having certain sex acts with him wasn’t a sin.

After a diocese review of the complaint, Bain was barred from ministering as a priest and now lives in private housing, the diocese said.

A Catholic priest preyed on a vulnerable Brooklyn parishioner by twisting church theology in order to pressure her into performing sex acts on him, a lawsuit charges.

Father Andre Bain is accused of sexually abusing the young woman, who came to him for counseling shortly after he became the head of St. Vincent Ferrer Church in East Flatbush in July 2014.

Instead of providing spiritual guidance, Bain, 44, pushed the woman — who was in her 20s — into sexual acts over the course of several months, according to the lawsuit. The priest kept her quiet about the abuse by telling her they weren’t committing a sin because it was not vaginal intercourse, the lawsuit says.

The accuser — who filed the lawsuit anonymously — is suing the Brooklyn Diocese and its bishop, Nicholas DiMarzio, for negligence, saying that they were slow to respond to the woman’s complaint, allowing Bain to prey on her and other women.

“Plaintiff believes that Fr. Bain has been carrying out these behaviors for decades in other parishes since his days in seminary,” the lawsuit says.

The diocese strongly disagreed, saying it immediately responded to the complaint and contacted law enforcement.

Bain, who was ordained a diocesan priest in 2004, declined to comment.

“I can’t respond to these innuendos at this time. I’m sorry,” he said by phone.

The Brooklyn Diocese’s spokeswoman, Carolyn Erstad, said that after an internal review, Bain was barred from ministering as a priest and now lives in private housing.

Erstad disagreed with the lawsuit’s account of the diocese’s response to the complaint. She said the diocese immediately responded when it received the first complaint about Bain on its anonymous reporting line on Jan. 21, 2015.

“The protocols of our zero tolerance policy were meticulously followed and documented,” Erstad said.

She noted that the diocese quickly reported the allegations to the Brooklyn district attorney’s office. The DA’s office and the NYPD both found that no crime had been committed, she said.

“What doesn’t make sense is who the plaintiff has chosen to sue,” Erstad said. “The lawsuit accuses the bishop of being negligent, but the facts show just the opposite.”

The court papers say the accuser and her mother both called the diocese’s sex abuse hotline on Jan. 18, 2015 — but they never got a response. The mother called on Jan. 19 but never heard from anyone, the lawsuit says.

Church officials only got back to them when the mother hand-delivered a written complaint to the diocese office, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit was filed under seal in Brooklyn Supreme Court earlier this year. The Daily News recently obtained a copy of the suit.

When contacted about the case, the accuser’s lawyer, Pamela Hayes, said the Brooklyn Diocese needs to do a better job of weeding out bad priests.

“The bottom line is they are preying on vulnerable people and using tenets of their religion to do so,” Hayes said.

The accuser met Bain when she was in her mid-20s.

She had attended St. Vincent Ferrer since 2009 and volunteered as a eucharistic minister and an administrative aide at the church.

Bain came to St. Vincent Ferrer as a parish administrator after serving at the Church of St. Patrick in Bay Ridge.

The abuse started shortly after his arrival and lasted until January 2015, according to the lawsuit.

Bain allegedly didn’t fear being disciplined over the unholy acts.

“He told the plaintiff that he acted in this way before and that he would neither get into trouble with the diocese nor lose his priesthood,” the lawsuit says.

The man of the cloth didn’t leave her alone after she broke off contact with him. He stalked her and went to her workplace, according to the lawsuit.

After the accuser’s mother delivered the complaint, diocesan officials removed him from St. Vincent Ferrer in March or April 2015, the lawsuit says.

He was sent to live at St. Finbar Church in Bensonhurst, but was occasionally spotted back at St. Vincent Ferrer, the lawsuit says.

The diocese said Bain stayed at St. Finbar while it investigated the accusations. He was not allowed to minister and only lived there until he found his own private housing, the diocese said.

Meanwhile, the accuser has spiraled into a deep depression over the alleged abuse and no longer attends St. Vincent Ferrer.

Joelle Casteix, the western regional leader of the advocacy group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said people don’t realize that many victims are adults — not just minors. She said that abusive priests can take advantage of their position of power and twist the counseling relationship.

“These women don’t report what happens because they think they’re adults and that they’re not the victims,” Casteix said.