OLEAN (NY)
Times Herald
August 19, 2019
By Danielle Gamble
A lawsuit filed last week brought the number of Cattaraugus County priests accused of sexual abuse to four.
The Rev. Duane G. Fimbel was accused of sexually abusing a child more than 40 years ago while serving as pastor of Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church in Portville by an anonymous plaintiff in a Child Victims Act lawsuit filed Wednesday.
Fimbel, who died in 2011 at age 80, is accused of sexually abusing a then-14-year-old child from 1976 to 1977. Defendants in the case include the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo and the Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels, as Sacred Heart merged with St. Mary’s in 2007.
The Rev. Patrick Melfi, pastor of the basilica, said he was not aware of the lawsuit until reached by the Times Herald on Friday.
“We certainly are heartbroken by these stories that are coming out and we continue to pray for the victims, and certainly call for healing in these situations,” Melfi said, directing further comment to the diocese.
Olean Times Herald archives show Fimbel became pastor of Sacred Heart on June 27, 1976. It was announced a year and a half later, Dec. 17, 1977, that Fimbel would be transferred to Frewsburg to become pastor of Our Lady of Victory.
According to his obituary published in The Buffalo News, Fimbel was born in Buffalo and served in 10 locations in the Buffalo area in addition to serving at Sacred Heart.
Fimbel was also a graduate of St. Bonaventure University, according to archived articles.
His case was one of more than 250 suits filed last week in New York state by Jeff Anderson & Associates, a Minnesota-based law firm, under the new “lookback” window established under the Child Victims Act, or CVA. The one-year opening gives sex abuse victims a chance to file formerly expired claims in civil court.
Fimbel was one of 14 priests accused by the firm last week as a sex abuser who had not been previously named by the diocese.
Another former Sacred Heart priest accused of abuse was the Rev. Norbert Orsolits, who kicked off Western New York’s priest sexual abuse scandal in 2018 by admitting to The Buffalo News that he sexually abused “probably dozens” of teenage boys during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Orsolits became pastor in Portville in 1983 after serving as associate pastor at St. Mary of the Angels Church in Olean. He also taught at Archbishop Walsh High School.
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