BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News
April 15, 2019
By Jay Tokasz
In the 1950s and ’60s, he was arguably Buffalo’s most renowned Catholic priest, writing books on youth and their concerns and regularly traveling the country and abroad to speak at youth conferences. The president of Italy even awarded Schieder a “Star of Solidarity,” one of that nation’s highest honors for noncitizens.
But behind his accomplishments, Schieder hid a dark secret.
The secret wasn’t revealed until 2018 – more than two decades after Schieder’s death at age 87 – when his name was included on a Buffalo Diocese list of priests with substantiated allegations of child sexual abuse against them.
The Buffalo News has learned at least five men have complained to the diocese that Schieder abused them when they were minors, and the alleged abuses spanned several decades.
One of the complainants recently accepted a $340,000 settlement offer through a diocese program to compensate victims, according to attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who said his client was between 11 and 13 when Schieder allegedly abused him more than 100 times between 1960 and 1964.
Another complainant accused Schieder in a Fort Lauderdale police report of sexually abusing him, starting in 1987. The same man who went to Fort Lauderdale police filed a pro se lawsuit in 1993 against Schieder in federal court in Florida. Police didn’t charge Schieder, and the federal court case was dismissed. When the man notified the Buffalo Diocese in 2002, then-Bishop Henry J. Mansell wrote a letter back stating that the diocese had received no other complaints about Schieder.
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