A lawsuit alleging child sex abuse by the late Auxiliary Bishop Guy Sansaricq of Brooklyn has been stayed after several years of inactivity, with proceedings expected to resume only after “a few months,” according to a court official.
The delay was requested after attorneys for the Black Catholic prelate notified the court of his death, which occurred in 2021. Civil cases in New York involving a party deceased since filing are stayed until a suitable party is substituted.
Sansaricq, the first Haitian-American Catholic prelate in the United States, was originally sued by Victor Petit-Phare in 2019. Court filings detail alleged abuse dating to the 1990s at St. Jerome Catholic School in Brooklyn, where Sansaricq served as a priest following his immigration to New York in 1971.
Petit-Phare alleged that Sansaricq repeatedly abused him sexually beginning when he was seven years old in 1993, and continuing until around the year 1996.
“The dominating culture of the Catholic Church over [Petit-Phare] pressured [him] not to report Bishop Sansaricq’s sexual abuse of him,” reads the complaint filed with the King County Supreme Court against Sansaricq, the Diocese of Brooklyn, and St. Jerome’s Church and School.
The lawsuit further alleges that the diocese never notified families at St. Jerome’s School that there were “credible allegations” against Sansaricq. It is not clear, however, if or when Petit-Phare notified the diocese of the alleged abuse prior to 2019, or if prior accusations were extant before his alleged abuse occurred.
The case was filed under the New York Child Victims Act (CVA), which went into effect in 2019 and allowed for alleged victims of child sex abuse to file civil lawsuits regardless of the statute of limitation. The CVA provided a two-year “lookback window” for such cases, allowing them to be filed until 2021.
Sansaricq, whom the diocese says “vehemently denied” the allegations, was known for his advocacy concerning Haiti and its diaspora, cofounded the National Center of the Haitian Apostolate in the late 1970s, and served as the nonprofit’s first director. He also cofounded Haitian Americans United for Progress, which advocates for immigrants and refugees.
Sansaricq, who was ordained in Haiti in 1960, was named pastor of St. Jerome’s Church in 1993 and was made a monsignor by Pope John Paul II six years later.
Sansaricq was appointed as an auxiliary bishop for the Diocese of Brooklyn in 2006 by Pope Benedict XVI, and continued his work with the Haitian community throughout his episcopacy. He retired in 2010, and continued to serve in ministry while living at St. Matthew’s Church in Crown Heights.
Despite the lawsuit against Sansaricq in civil court, the Diocese of Brooklyn did not publicize the allegation until the time of his death in August 2021—just one week after the two-year lookback window closed for CVA cases.
After several years of inactivity in the lawsuit against Sansaricq—one of hundreds filed against the diocese under the CVA statute—an attorney for Petit-Phare requested a preliminary conference earlier this year with New York Supreme Court Justice Alexander Tisch and the other parties in the case. The in-person meeting was subsequently scheduled for Thursday morning in Manhattan.
On Wednesday—more than four years after the fact—an attorney for Sansaricq notified the court of Sansaricq’s death, triggering a legal mechanism that will push back the conference to a later date.
At the time of Sansaricq’s death, the chancery said it had referred the case to the Catholic Church’s “appropriate ecclesiastical authorities” for follow-up, though the result of that action is unknown. Also in 2019, survivor advocates called the diocese's decision to withhold information from the public “wrong” and “reckless.”
“We are outraged that in this case it appears that once again Catholic officials failed to act to help survivors heal and to protect today's children,” wrote Mike McDonnell, then the national communications manager for Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP).
“We applaud Victor for his courage in speaking out. We encourage anyone who may have suffered harm at the hands of Bishop Sansaricq, or anyone who may have witnessed or suspected abuse, to come forward to law enforcement and make a report.”
The Diocese of Brooklyn did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this story. Attempts by Black Catholic Messenger to reach Victor Petit-Phare were unsuccessful.
Nate Tinner-Williams is co-founder and editor of Black Catholic Messenger.
