NEW YORK
27east
By Erin McKinley
A Hampton Bays family is suing the Diocese of Rockville Centre and the Mission of St. Vincenet De Paul, saying they failed to protect an 8-year-old girl from being sexually assaulted by a now fugitive former priest.
Filed on November 13 in State Supreme Court, the suit stems from charges against Augusto Cortez for inappropriately touching a girl who was 6 years old at the time of the assault and, ultimately, giving her a sexually transmitted disease.
According to the suit, both the Mission of St. Vincent De Paul and the Diocese failed to protect the little girl by failing to remove him from the order of St. Vincent De Paul, and for lying about circumstances surrounding a previous case involving a 12-year-old girl in Brooklyn in 2008.
The Diocese of Rockville Centre is a district under the direction of the Roman Vatican that comprises of Nassau and Suffolk Counties, while the Congregation of the Mission of St. Vincent De Paul is a Roman Catholic order based in Pennsylvania.
The family first met Mr. Cortez when he was serving as a priest in the Vincentian Congregation based out of St. Rosalie’s Church in Hampton Bays, where he served until moving to St. John the Baptist Roman Catholic Church in Brooklyn in 2005. Although no longer on the East End, Mr. Cortez kept close contact with the family, often conducting religious ceremonies in the family home. Then in 2008, Mr. Cortez was arrested and charged with fondling the breasts of a 12-year-old student at the St. John the Baptist Catholic Parish School while the two were alone in a computer room.
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