The Buffalo Diocese held only one phase of its compensation program, awarding $17.5 million to 106 claimants earlier this year. The Buffalo Diocese offered awards ranging from $2,000 to $650,000 to 127 applicants. It also rejected 135 applicants who were deemed ineligible for the program, mostly because they had not complained to the diocese prior to March 1, 2018.

The diocese declined to offer a second phase of the program to consider what officials called "an unexpectedly large number of new or previously unknown claims."

Reck also said intense media coverage in Western New York may have played a role in the large number of lawsuits filed so far against the Buffalo Diocese.

Based on the number of suits filed, Blow said the Child Victims Act is already a success.

"We were all guessing it would be a number in the hundreds, that it would not break 1,000," Blow said of how many lawsuits she had predicted would be filed during the one-year window.

She said she doesn't expect as many suits to be filed in the coming months as were filed in the first month.