BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News
August 13, 2019
By Jay Tokasz and Dan Herbeck
The tight lid that the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo kept for decades on clergy sex abuse cases will be peeled open Wednesday with a new state law that gives abuse victims a year to file claims that previously were prohibited from moving forward in court.
Lawyers predicted the diocese would face more than 200 lawsuits by the end of the one-year “look-back” window that will open at 12:01 a.m.
The names of at least a dozen Catholic priests who hadn’t before been publicly accused of child sex abuse will emerge in the filings, according to lawyers filing the lawsuits.
Among the newly identified accused priest is the Rev. David J. Peter, who died in 2017.
David J. Harvey of Buffalo alleged that the diocese allowed Peter to rape and repeatedly molest him more than 35 years ago, when Harvey was an altar boy at St. Edmund Church in the Town of Tonawanda.
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