ALBANY (NY)
Daily Gazette
September 17, 2019
By Stephen Williams
Retired Albany Catholic Diocese Bishop Howard J. Hubbard is denying the latest allegations leveled against him under the Child Victims Act, as the diocese continues to face new accusations of abuse by priests.
Hubbard is denying the allegations in two new lawsuits filed in state Supreme Court in Albany County last week. One alleges that he was directly involved in abuse of a young woman in a Schenectady church in the 1980s while he was bishop, the other that he was aware of a diocese priest having committed abuse and didn’t act.
“In response to the allegations of sexual misconduct that have been made against me under the Child Victims Act, I have stated before and I repeat that I have never sexually abused anyone of any age at any time,” Hubbard said in a statement through his attorneys, O’Connor First of Albany.
One case was filed on behalf of an anonymous 54-year-old Schenectady County woman, naming the Albany Diocese, Hubbard and Father Francis Melfe, the former pastor of the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Schenectady, which closed in 2010. Melfe, who was eventually laicized, faces a separate lawsuit brought by the children in an allegedly “secret” family he maintained while serving as a priest.
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