BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News
February 10, 2020
By Jay Tokasz
The Rev. Dennis G. Riter, a Dunkirk pastor who was accused of sex abuse in two Child Victims Act lawsuits despite a Buffalo Diocese investigation that cleared him of the claims, died Saturday in Buffalo General Hospital after a brief illness. He was 74.
Riter was the longtime pastor of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton parish in Dunkirk. He was the first active priest in the Buffalo Diocese to be put on leave in 2018 due to a newly reported child sex abuse allegation. After a three-month investigation, a diocese review board recommended that Riter be returned to the parish because the initial claim and a second that also surfaced could not be substantiated.
Riter, who was assigned to Dunkirk since 2008, maintained he was innocent.
The parish welcomed back Riter, but the allegations continued to linger, as the two men who had reported their claims to the diocese in 2018 sued under the Child Victims Act.
One of the men alleged Riter abused him in the 1990s when he was an altar boy at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in South Buffalo; the other man claimed he was abused in 1992, when Riter was assigned to a Lackawanna church.
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