SYRACUSE (NY)
Syracuse.com
December 2, 2018
By Julie McMahon
The Syracuse diocese’s list of abusive priests contains the names of “dozens” of people who can no longer be prosecuted for sex crimes against children, according to Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick.
Some of those priests are deceased, the diocese said in a statement Saturday. The list, which will be released Monday morning, includes allegations dating back to the 1950s. New York state’s statute of limitations prevents Fitzpatrick from pursuing charges against the others.
“The list, if it had one name on it, would be distressing,” Fitzpatrick said. “And the fact that it has dozens of names on it, I personally think, is a crisis that is affecting the Catholic Church greater than the Reformation. It is so distressing.”
Fitzpatrick, who is Roman Catholic, was comparing the clergy sex abuse scandal that has continued to plague the church since it was first exposed in the early 2000s to a time in the 16th Century when Protestants broke from the Catholic Church.
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