DAN ORZECHOWSKI
News Editor
Last week I wrote an article that connected a former chaplain of Fredonia’s Newman Center to sexual violence, and it was one of the toughest pieces I’ve had to write.
I come from a small New England town, where Catholicism dominates the community. Growing up, Sundays seemed longer than any other day of the week. My siblings and I would twiddle our thumbs in Sunday school as we impatiently waited for mass to end. Occasionally, one of us was rewarded with staying home after acting sick.
Going to church can be tough for kids. Thankfully, a good amount of my classmates were in the same boat. An exclusive group of us even had a secret language we would use to signal to each other across aisles.
Despite having to sit through mass, I still enjoyed seeing my community come together once a week.
While I was writing last week, I feared that I could ruin this for folks in Fredonia.
The Rev. Edward J. Walker, who worked closely with the local Newman Center, then known as the Newman Club, was one of the 42 priests listed by the Buffalo Diocese to have been accused of sexual abuse.
Although he died in 2002, Walker is still remembered by many. I continuously questioned whether it was appropriate to print a story, not only about a dead priest, but a priest who was seen as a trustful person.
Printing the story days after Easter was another hard decision.
As my colleague Seth Meyer and I continued to piece together the story, more and more people started asking me: what’s the point? Why would we waste our time writing about something that happened decades ago?
The point was to make a call for action.
Just because this man is dead does not mean others should prop him up on a pedestal and remember him as a good person.
Of course, a trial never happened, and we may never know if Walker actually committed these crimes. I, as everyone else should be, am a believer in people being innocent until proven guilty.
However, every name on the list provided by the diocese had multiple allegations against them. The courage it took for survivors to come out and talk about their experiences is incredibly admirable and should not be overlooked.
One sexual predator is too many. Now we’re talking about 42 of them just in western New York alone.
Simply providing a list of alleged abusers is not enough from the Buffalo Diocese. Unlike the list that was just provided by the diocese of Erie, P.A., Buffalo’s list failed to give any locations and dates from when accusations took place.
When asked by WKBW Buffalo if more information will be added to Buffalo’s list, Diocese of Buffalo spokesman George Richert said, “I just cannot say definitely at this time.”
That’s unacceptable.
We should not be protecting people, whether they’re alive or not, if they’ve committed such crimes.
Accepting that someone in your community, someone you could trust and talk to is, or was, a perpetrator is no easy task. I get that.
But voices are stronger in numbers. The amount of allegations and survivors do not deserve to be ignored. They’re not crying wolf here.