Manchester Bishop Peter Libasci has until Friday to respond to sexual assault allegations as part of settlement negotiations with the plaintiff in a lawsuit against him, a judge ordered last week.
The suit, filed in 2021, accuses the Roman Catholic bishop of sexually harassing and sexually assaulting a 12-year-old boy in the early 1980s, according to court documents. The case reached a standstill two years ago when Libasci’s former diocese in New York filed for bankruptcy in the wake of hundreds of allegations.
The victim is seeking compensatory and punitive damages of more than $25,000.
Libasci, who has denied the allegations, is not facing criminal charges. He remains in his position as Bishop of Manchester.
Libasci, who previously was auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Rockville Center on Long Island, was appointed to the Diocese of Manchester in 2011 when Bishop John McCormack retired. Libasci’s appointment to lead the state’s estimated 285,000 Catholics drew criticism from watchdog groups and advocates for sexual assault victims.
One called his appointment “another example of the Vatican’s cronyism and failure to treat the ongoing abuse crisis with the seriousness it deserves,” while Libasci vowed to help Catholics heal from the clergy sexual abuse crisis.
In the two years between the time the state of New York lifted its statute of limitations on cases of child sexual abuse in 2019 and when the victim filed his lawsuit 2021, thousands of survivors came forward. More than 200 of the lawsuits alleging sexual abuse were filed against priests and others in the Catholic Diocese of Rockville Center.
The lawsuit against Libasci alleges that in 1983 and 1984, while serving as a priest at a church on Long Island, he repeatedly touched the genitals of a boy who was 12 to 13 years old at the time.
The lawsuit names the parish, Saints Cyril and Methodius Roman Catholic Church, and Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic School, which is run by the Sisters of St. Joseph, as defendants for failing to prevent the abuse and enabling Libasci’s “sexual deviancy.” The Sisters of St. Joseph have denied knowledge of the allegations, rejected the initial complaint and are asking Judge Leonard Steinman to dismiss it.
In a statement released on behalf of Libasci, attorney Michael Connolly said, “The allegation that, almost 40 years ago, Bishop Libasci assaulted an individual while serving as a parish priest in Deer Park, New York, is not true. While Libasci has great compassion for victims of sexual abuse, he will be forced to vigorously defend these false allegations in court.”
Previous NH cases
New Hampshire’s Catholic Church went through its own investigative process 21 years ago after state prosecutors looked into numerous allegations that priests had molested young parishioners. For 10 months, then-Attorney General Philip McLaughlin and his staff prepared evidence against 60 priests in the state who were accused of sexually abusing children between the early 1980s and the early 2000s.
Just as government lawyers were preparing to present child endangerment indictments against the Catholic Church to a grand jury, McLaughlin and then-Bishop McCormack reached a 10-page agreement committing church officials to change the culture. And in the first-of-its-kind confession, McCormack acknowledged that without it, church administrators would have faced criminal charges that it failed to protect children from abusive priests.
The church in New Hampshire paid out nearly $15.5 million to settle lawsuits brought by sexual abuse victims between 2001 and 2003.
By this time, McCormack was already scorned by many Catholic reformers. During the mid-1980s as a senior aide to Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law, McCormack was in charge of investigating complaints against abusive priests but instead of removing them from the ministry, he frequently transferred the accused priests to different parishes.
In 2018, the Catholic Church in America faced further national scrutiny when a federal investigation probed into at least 14 states and the District of Columbia. The investigation stemmed from a grand jury in Pennsylvania that summer that produced an 800-page report alleging 1,000 incidents of sexual molestation by more than 300 priests in six different dioceses.
In a letter to New Hampshire Catholics about the wave of clergy sex abuse cases, Libasci wrote, “These revelations have left me sickened, embarrassed and heart-broken.”
In an effort to maintain transparency, Libasci added a page to the diocese’s website listing the 73 priests credibly accused of child abuse dating back to 1950.
Of them, 56 are listed as deceased. No names have been added to the list since 2019.
As New York had, New Hampshire in 2020 eliminated the statute of limitations on lawsuits for alleged sexual abuse.
Suits have followed, including an ongoing lawsuit alleging widespread abuse in juvenile detention facilities, including the former Sununu Youth Center, dating back to the 1980s and 1990s.
