NEW YORK (NY)
Daily News
February 14, 2019
By Linda Stasi and Dan Gold
A Queens man claims he endured sexual abuse by a priest who would later be accused of concealing the sins of pedophile priests in the Brooklyn Diocese.
For over four decades, Tommy Davis says, he carried the secret that he’d been repeatedly sexually abused as a teen by Monsignor Otto Garcia, one of the most powerful figures in the diocese — a figure alleged in a bombshell 2003 lawsuit of being “part of the concerted effort” to cover up diocese sex abuse.
And Davis says his shame caused him to fall into drugs, alcoholism and ruined relationships before getting sober. It took him decades to tell his story, only to be ignored by the law and rebuffed by the church after the diocese’s Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program (IRCP) found that there was “insufficient support” to find his claim eligible for compensation.
Garcia denies all of Davis’ accusations.
With the passage of the Child Victims Act in New York State — which was signed into law by Gov. Cuomo Thursday — Davis and other alleged sex abuse victims are hoping for another chance at finally getting divine justice.
But it was a long time coming.
Davis told The News in painful, wrenching interviews and emails over the course of six months that his sexual abuse began when he was a teenage altar boy at St. Michael’s Church in Flushing, Queens. He remembers how happy his parents, devoted parishioners, were when they got the news that he had secured a job answering phones in the rectory after the secretaries left at 5 p.m.
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