New York man receives $8 million from Diocese of Albany in abuse settlement

CNA Staff, Oct 17, 2025 / 15:09 pm (CNA).

A New York man has received an $8 million settlement from the Diocese of Albany over claims that he was abused for years by a priest when he was a child. 

The Albany-based law firm LaFave, Wein, Frament & Karic said in an Oct. 16 press release that the Albany diocese agreed to pay the seven-figure sum to Michael Harmon ahead of a planned Oct. 20 jury trial. 

The law firm said Harmon had been abused repeatedly for years, starting when he was 11 years old, by Father Edward Charles Pratt. During that period, Pratt served as vice chancellor of the Albany diocese. 

Pratt is listed on the diocese’s list of clergy who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse. He was removed from ministry in 2002, the diocese says. 

The law firm said the diocese had “received reports about Father Pratt’s sexual abuse of children before Michael was ever abused.” The priest allegedly lived in the diocesan chancery in the same residence as then-Bishop Howard Hubbard. 

In 2021, Hubbard, who died in 2023, admitted to mishandling clergy abuse allegations based on the advice of psychiatric professionals. He was also accused of committing sexual abuse himself, and shortly before his death announced that he had entered into a civil marriage with a woman.

In the Oct. 16 release, attorney Cynthia LaFave said the “substantial” settlement from the Albany diocese nevertheless “does not erase the trauma that Michael Harmon endured.” 

“Michael will live with this for all of his life,” she said. “But Michael does know that this settlement brings out to the public this horrible abuse and the people who allowed it.”

Harmon had filed his case under the New York Child Victims Act. That law, passed in 2019, suspended the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse and gave abuse victims a window to file claims for decades-old crimes. 

Harmon’s lawyers said he had originally tried to settle his claim in March 2025 but that the diocese’s insurance companies “refused to respond to his offer.”

The Albany diocese did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Oct. 17. 

The Diocese of Albany filed for bankruptcy in 2023, arguing like many dioceses in the U.S. that financial reorganization would help provide some compensation for hundreds of sex abuse victims who filed lawsuits against it. 

In July hundreds of clergy abuse victims agreed to a massive $246 million settlement from the Diocese of Rochester, New York after years of wrangling in U.S. bankruptcy court.

In August, meanwhile, a federal bankruptcy court accepted the Diocese of Syracuse, New York’s $176 million abuse settlement plan.