MONSIGNOR IN CHARGE OF HANDLING PEDOPHILE PRIESTS ACCUSED OF MOLESTING TEEN BOY

NEW YORK (NY)
Newsweek

Sept. 11, 2019

By Daniel Avery

Apopular Catholic priest has been named in two sex abuse lawsuits filed this week in New York City.

Monsignor Otto Garcia, a vicar at St. Teresa’s Church in Woodside, is accused of sexually assaulting 61-year-old Tom Davis when Davis was a teenage alter boy in the 1970s.

“He was able to pick me as a prime victim because of my parents’ involvement in the church,” Davis said in a press conference Tuesday. “I just didn’t think anyone would believe me. I said nothing until my parents passed.”

The abuse allegedly occurred between 1971 and 1973, when Davis was an altar boy at St. Michael’s Church in Flushing, Queens. His family was fully enmeshed in church life — his mother was a teacher in the parish school and his father was the parish basketball coach. Davis got a job answering phones in the rectory and Garcia would allegedly come by to visit alone.

“He would start with, ‘You look tense, let me rub your back.’ Then he’d say, ‘Let me rub lower, stand up,’ Davis told the New York Daily News in February. “He’d make me stand up, he’d put his hands under my shirt and try to get under my pants. Then he would start grinding me from behind and rub my nipples. I was terrified.”

Davis says he tried to push back, but “he was bigger than me — he’d use physical force to keep me trapped, rubbing his groin against me,” he recounted. “He’d see how far he could go.”

Getting a job at a local grocery store, Davis finally quit working at the rectory. But he still couldn’t bring himself to come forward with the abuse because his parents — and his community — held Father Garcia in such high regard. Later, as an adult working as a plumber at Shea Stadium, he feared speaking out would damage his career.

Eventually Garcia was made monsignor, while Davis felt so ashamed he began abusing drugs and alcohol and sabotaging relationships. After years of soul searching and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, he finally reported the abuse to the Diocese of Brooklyn’s review board in 2017.

The board determined there was “a lack of evidence” for his accusations, and prosecutors said the statute of limitations had long run out.

“I reported [Garcia] to the diocese and even picked him out of a lineup, but after a two-day investigation, they just swept it under the rug,” Davis at Tuesday’s press briefing. “I’m not looking for a payday,” he told the Daily News. “I’m just trying to get [Monsignor Garcia] out of the ministry.”

A second suit against Garcia was also filed by a John Doe, though details have not been made available.

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