NIAGARA (NY)
Niagara Gazette
March 30, 2018
By Philip Gambini
After five decades of silence since being sexually assaulted at the hands of a well-known Niagara County priest, Mark Lynch will speak his truth this afternoon in the City of Buffalo.
“I have feared for several months the reality that, somewhere along in this healing process, a public statement would be both necessary and healing. I am answering the call from Bishop (Richard J.) Malone to come forward and be counted,” Lynch said in a prepared statement shared with the Niagara Gazette on Thursday.
Lynch, 63, will deliver his remarks today in Buffalo on the steps of St. Joseph’s Cathedral, 50 Franklin St., at 3 p.m. – a time of religious significance on the Catholic holy day of Good Friday.
“I am making this public statement in the hopes that other victims might be emboldened to come forward,” Lynch said.
In his remarks, Lynch said the sexual assault was perpetrated by a clergyman well-known in the Niagara Region, whose name he will disclose at the press conference later today.
The priest, now deceased, was not on a list of 42 known clergy abusers released by the diocese earlier this year, but Lynch said it his “understanding that I was only the first among many of his victims.”
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