LOS ANGELES (CA)
WIVB TV
June 4, 2019
By Chris Horvatits
The former executive assistant to Bishop Richard Malone says the compensation program set up by the diocese for victims of clergy sex abuse “didn’t have survivors best interest at heart or in mind”.
Siobhan O’Connor, who leaked several documents that detailed clergy sex abuse from the diocese’s archives, spoke at a press conference in Los Angeles Tuesday afternoon. The announcement was made as six dioceses in California are launching a victims compensation program similar to the Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program that the Diocese of Buffalo set up.
O’Connor was still Malone’s executive assistant when the program launched on March 1, 2018.
“As I learned more about it and experienced the fallout from it, I learned that really what they had been preparing for was the legal and the financial ramifications. They had not planned for the practicalities and the logistics,” O’Connor said.
Last week, the diocese announced that the program was complete, and that $17.6 million had been paid out to 107 victims of clergy abuse.
O’Connor also alleged that diocesan officials didn’t adequately respond to victims who called about the program.
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