NEW YORK
WAMC
August 3, 2019
By Karen DeWitt
Beginning on August 14, New Yorkers who are survivors of childhood sexual abuse will have a one-year window of opportunity to file civil suits against their abusers, under the terms of the Child Victims Act passed by the legislature earlier this year. Thousands of cases are expected to be filed, with payouts potentially in the millions.
Gordon Smith was 14-years-old when he says he was first abused by two priests at a St. Patrick’s Catholic Church and school in Albany in the early 1960s.
He was filling in as a janitor for his father, who was sick. He says the abuse continued, on a weekly basis, for three years.
“It was about as horrific as it could get,” said Smith, in an interview with public radio and TV. “We’re talking about molestation, we’re talking about sodomization, we’re talking about oral sex.”
One of the priests that Smith is accusing, Father Donald Starks, appears on a list kept by the Albany Roman Catholic Diocese of priests with “credible” accusations against them. Starks died in 1989.
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.