A former bishop from Nashville and Buffalo has been accused of actively covering up abuse by more than twenty plaintiffs who just filed a lawsuit in New York. We hope that this lawsuit will encourage others who may have seen, suspected, or suffered abuse to come forward to authorities and make a report.

The lawsuit, centered on Bishop Edward Kmiec’s time as Bishop of Buffalo from 2004 until his retirement in 2012, alleges that the bishop actively engaged in a “conspiracy of ‘harassing, threatening, extorting, and misleading victims of sexual abuse committed by priests’ and of ‘misleading priests’ victims and the media to prevent reporting or disclosure of sexual misconduct.’” Given what seems to be an ongoing culture of abuse and cover-up in Buffalo, we are not shocked by the allegations in this lawsuit. We hope that parishioners and the public – in both Buffalo and Nashville – will demand answers from their current church officials considering these new allegations.

Bishop Kmiec was also the former Bishop of Nashville and worked in Tennessee from 1992 to 2004 before becoming the Bishop of Buffalo in 2004.

In New York, Attorney General Letitia James is already investigating clergy abuse and we hope anyone with knowledge of cover ups in New York will contact her today. We hope that this news will also encourage Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery III to follow in the footsteps AG James and nineteen other contemporaries and open an independent investigation into clergy abuse in his state.

CONTACT: Zach Hiner, Executive Director (zhiner@snapnetwork.org, 517-974-9009)

(SNAP, the Survivors Network, has been providing support for victims of sexual abuse in institutional settings for 30 years. We have more than 25,000 survivors and supporters in our network. Our website is SNAPnetwork.org)