Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio fired off a stern two-page letter to Markey, which was met with defiance from the state lawmaker. She insisted she told the truth despite calls for a retraction and for her to resign.
“I am writing this letter to refresh your memory as to our conversation nine years ago and to demand your immediate retraction of your defamatory statements,” DiMarzio wrote. “My character has been impugned and my name slandered as the bishop of the Diocese of Brooklyn.”
But Markey wasn’t backing down a day after telling the Daily News DiMarzio allegedly offered hush money to pay for counseling for her relative who was sexually abused as a child. In exchange for the cash, Markey was expected to stop advocating for a bill to extend the statute of limitations for claims of child sex abuse, she said.
“I told the truth. I don’t lie,” she said Tuesday. “I’m not going to apologize. He should apologize to the victims.”
Markey conceded she initially gave The News the incorrect date of the meeting where the bribe allegedly occurred. It was in 2007, not 2010. A nun who was in the room when Markey and DiMarzio spoke said the subject of money never came up.
“No money, no $5,000 was ever mentioned,” Sister Ellen Patricia Allen, no longer employed by the Diocese of Brooklyn, told The News.
Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, called for Markey, a devout Catholic, to resign and slammed her as a “notorious anti-Catholic bigot.”
Poetic injustice: Bishop shielded by a statute of limitations
Meanwhile, DiMarzio said in his letter Markey’s poor recollection proved the church’s point about the dangers of eliminating or extending the statute of limitations.
“Memories fade, witnesses die, and evidence gets lost,” he wrote.
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