NEW YORK (NY)
Daily News
January 9, 2019
By Marco Poggio and Larry McShane
Two Bronx sisters accused a high-ranking Catholic Church official of sexually assaulting them across five years after he was welcomed into their neighborhood as a parish priest.
The allegations were made public Wednesday outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral by Robert Hoatson, president of Road to Recovery, a charity assisting abuse victims and their families.
The older girl was in her early teens and her kid sister just age 7 when the abuse by Monsignor Charles McDonagh began inside their home back in 1972, according to Hoatson.
McDonagh had just arrived at Our Lady of Refuge, a heavily Irish parish in the Bronx. The priest was later promoted to serve as secretary to Terence Cardinal Cooke and his successor John Cardinal O’Connor, spending about six years in the position.
The two targeted siblings “worshiped their parish priest,” charged Hoatson. “And, as a result of that, Monsignor Charles McDonagh inserted himself into their family and abused two of the girls in that family.”
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