NEW YORK (NY)
Daily News
February 16, 2019
By Nancy Dillon and Dan Good
She calls him her “nemesis” and the “fixer” of the Diocese of Brooklyn — and she’s not surprised by a new allegation he too was a predatory priest.
Sister Sally Butler, a longtime Brooklyn nun, says Queens-based Monsignor Otto Garcia personally covered up multiple sex abuse complaints involving other priests while serving in high-ranking positions under Bishop Thomas Daily.
She brought forward three cases to the diocese, she said, so hearing this week he’s now facing the first public allegation he personally molested an adolescent boy in the early 1970s was hardly a shock.
“He was the Michael Cohen of the diocese. He was the ‘fixer.’ He seemed to be a totally amoral person,” she said of Garcia, comparing him to the disgraced lawyer who pleaded guilty last year to illegally funneling money to cover up alleged affairs involving President Trump.
Butler spoke out after Queens resident Thomas Davis told the Daily News in an exclusive interview that Garcia sexually assaulted him multiple times when he was a minor working in the rectory at St. Michael’s Catholic Church in Flushing between 1973 and 1975.
Garcia denied the allegations to The News, claiming he barely knew Davis. “I had so little contact with him that I didn’t know him at all,” he said.
The Brooklyn Diocese released the names Friday of 108 priests credibly accused of sexual misconduct. Garcia was one of two priests listed separately who had an allegation against him that was deemed “unsubstantiated.”
Former Queens resident Bob Burns said hearing the new allegation against Garcia made him “feel violated again.”
“I’m just pissed off. I’m angry,” he told The News. “I wish I was shocked. I always had issues with (Garcia). He was the clean-up man.”
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