Niagara County lawsuits detail clergy sexual and physical abuse allegations under Child Victims Act look-back window

Lawsuits filed in Niagara County reveal the details of abuse suffered by scores of children over the past several decades. These legal complaints, part of a wave of court documents following the opening of the Child Victims Act “look-back window,” allow survivors to pursue civil lawsuits against their abusers, even if the statute of limitations has expired.

The majority of the civil legal complaints accuse clergy or employees of the Diocese of Buffalo of sexual and physical abuse. The diocese has named the majority of the accused as having substantiated claims of sexual abuse lodged against them.

Paul Barr, a local attorney, was among the first in Niagara County to publicly discuss a personal account of abuse by a member of the clergy. Barr said Freeman, who died in 2010, used his position and stature at Sacred Heart parish in the City of Niagara Falls to take advantage of him as a young man.

According to the lawsuit, Freeman served beer to Barr, who was then a minor, while the two were alone in the parish rectory about 1980. The priest told the intoxicated Barr a false story about a medical condition he had encountered as a chaplain at the nearby airbase. Freeman could examine Barr, but it required Barr to remove his pants and underwear to do so, the priest said, according to Barr. Freeman then backed Barr onto a couch and forcibly fondled Barr’s genitals. When he tried to leave, he found the door dead bolted. Freeman unlocked it and Barr left.

“Barr was scared and confused by Freeman’s conduct,” the lawsuit said. “He felt conflicted and betrayed because these unspeakable acts were being committed by a figure cloaked with spiritual authority and benevolence: the pastor whom Barr had come to trust and admire, and who had claimed that he was simply acting in Barr’s best interest,” the lawsuit said.

Barr refused a $45,000 settlement offer from the diocese’s Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program (IRCP), a fund established by the faith-based organization as a compensation mechanism for survivors, earlier this year.

Freeman eventually left Cataract City and was moved to a parish in the Village of Lancaster in Erie County. James Bottlinger, an Erie County man who is filing a civil lawsuit under the act, was abused by Freeman from 1984 to 1989, when he was 14 to 19 years old.

Bottlinger went public with allegations against Freeman earlier this summer, including that on at least one occasion, Freeman brandished a .38-caliber pistol while abusing him. On another occasion, the victim was abused by and with a male prostitute solicited by Freeman.

Freeman was replaced at Sacred Heart by Father Bernard M. Ma

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