ALBANY — Former Bishop Howard Hubbard is accused of sexually abusing a 16-year-old boy during the 1990s, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday.
“From approximately 1994 through 1998, Father Bondi and Bishop Hubbard exploited the trust and authority vested in them by defendants by grooming P.R. to gain his trust and to obtain control over him as part of Father Bondi and Bishop Hubbard’s plan to sexually molest and abuse P.R. and other children,” the lawsuit filed by the the Marsh Law Firm alleges.
Other lawsuits filed by the Marsh Law Firm allege numerous priests and church personnel in the Albany Diocese and leaders of the Twin Rivers Boy Scout Council failed to protect children from abusive adults in their organizations, and then spent years scheming to keep the allegations from reaching the public.
Wednesday was the first day in which lawsuits could be filed under the provisions of the Child Victims Act, a new state law creating a one-year “look-back” period for the filing of previously time-barred abuse lawsuits against alleged abusers and the institutions that may have covered up their predations.
The lawsuit filed by the Marsh firm against the diocese also names a number of local parishes as well as Albany’s LaSalle School as places where abuse took place.
It alleges the diocese “knew for decades that its priests, clergy, religious brothers, religious sisters, school administrators, teachers, employees, and volunteers were using their positions within the Diocese to groom and to sexually abuse children.”
“Despite that knowledge, the Diocese failed to take reasonable steps to protect children from being sexually abused and actively concealed the abuse.”
The Boy Scout council faces allegations two Scout leaders in the Twin Rivers Council, David Perkins and Harold Cloud, and older scouts at Camp Boyhaven in Middlegrove abused younger scouts in the early to mid-1970s.
“Despite decades of knowledge that its Scouting program was a magnet for child molesters, the (Boy Scouts of America) failed to take reasonable steps to protect children from being sexually abused,” the lawsuit alleges. “Even worse, the BSA actively concealed the widespread sexual abuse of young boys that occurred as a direct result of its supposedly ‘safe’ program and ‘trustworthy’ Scout leaders and volunteers.”
The national organization was ultimately forced to disclose it had for decades maintained so-called “perversion files” on scout leaders credibly accused of sexual abuse. The lawsuit filed by the Marsh firm notes that in 1972, a Boy Scout executive who oversaw the files “asked the other Scout Executives to keep the files confidential ‘because of the misunderstandings which could develop’ if the public learned of the files.”