NEW YORK
Syracuse.com

[with excerpt from the deposition]

By John O’Brien | jobrien@syracuse.com
on September 13, 2015

SYRACUSE, N.Y. – The victims of child-molesting priests are partly to blame for their own abuse, the bishop of Syracuse said in a sworn deposition that revealed his views on the church’s sex abuse scandal.

Bishop Robert Cunningham testified in a 2011 deposition in response to a federal lawsuit filed by a man who said a priest in the Syracuse diocese sexually abused him as a child.

The man’s lawyer asked Cunningham whether, in the eyes of the church, a child molested by a priest has committed a sin.

“The boy is culpable,” Cunningham said Oct. 14, 2011, according to a transcript of the deposition.

His sworn testimony provides rare insight into the thoughts of the highest-ranking Catholic in Syracuse about one of the most troubling chapters in the church’s history.