BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News
August 13, 2019
By Maki Becker
Forty-nine years ago he was told he should be excommunicated when he reported that a priest at Fourteen Holy Helpers Church in West Seneca had molested him.
Twenty-five years ago he was told that he couldn’t sue the priest or the church because the statue of limitations on such cases had run out.
On Wednesday, just after the stroke of midnight, Chris Szuflita saw a measure of justice he never dreamed he’d see.
He was among the very first people to sue under the Child Victims Act.
As of about 6 a.m. Wednesday, 95 lawsuits had been filed in Erie County. Ninety-two of them were against the Diocese of Buffalo; the other defendants included the East Aurora School District and the Boy Scouts of America.
At 12:01 a.m., Szuflita stood quietly behind a paralegal and an assistant seated at a computer desk in the Amherst law offices of Steve Boyd as he carefully typed in his name and the defendants’ names – the diocese, Fourteen Holy Helpers and five unnamed people – and uploaded a summons and complaint into the court system.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.