High-ranking Newark Archdiocese Official Resigns Amid Priest Sex Abuse Scandal

By Abbott Koloff
The Record
May 25, 2013

http://www.northjersey.com/news/High-ranking_Newark_Archdiocese_official_resigns_amid_Rev_Fugee_scandal.html

Monsignor Jack Doran

The second-highest official in the Newark Archdiocese has resigned in the wake of a scandal involving a former Wyckoff associate pastor who allegedly violated an agreement with law enforcement barring him from working with children, church officials confirmed Friday.

Monsignor John E. Doran will step down immediately as vicar general of the archdiocese as part of larger changes being implemented to protect children, Archbishop John J. Myers said in a letter that will be read in parishes across the archdiocese this weekend. In the letter, which church officials provided to The Record on Friday, Myers wrote that the move was being made “as a result of operational failures.”

Doran, who has been vicar general for six years, signed an agreement in 2007 with the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office that barred the Rev. Michael Fugee, a former associate pastor at the Church of St. Elizabeth of Hungary in Wyckoff who had initially been found guilty of groping an adolescent boy, from working with children for as long as he remained a priest.

Myers has faced heavy criticism over his handling of the case, with victims’ advocates and some politicians calling for him to resign. On Friday, a national victims’ advocacy group characterized Doran’s resignation as a face-saving move by Myers.

The archbishop did not place the blame for lax oversight on Doran, but said that the vicar general had agreed to resign his leadership position after an “outside law firm” conducted an investigation at the archbishop’s request into the supervision of Fugee and found that mistakes had been made.

“I told the firm that I wanted to know what happened and why,” Myers wrote. “The investigation found that the strong protocols we presently have in place were not always observed.”

He added that “Monsignor Doran and I felt that the archdiocese would be best served by his stepping down.”

Fugee confessed to groping a 13-year-old boy while he was at the Wyckoff church but later recanted. His 2003 conviction on a charge of aggravated criminal sexual contact was overturned in 2006 by an appellate panel because of a judicial error. An archdiocesan review board cleared him to return to ministry in 2009.

Fugee resigned from the ministry on May 2, days after it was reported that he had been attending youth group excursions, including a trip to Canada, with a Monmouth County church. The priest was arrested Monday at a Newark parish where he had been living and was charged with seven counts of violating a judicial order. He was freed after posting $25,000 bail.

Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said Fugee had heard children’s confessions on at least seven occasions between 2010 and 2012, including twice at Sacred Heart Church in Rochelle Park, where archdiocese officials allowed him to live for two years, and once at Our Lady of Visitation in Paramus.

David Clohessy, the director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, has been among the most vocal of those calling for Myers to step down. He said Friday that Doran’s resignation “changes virtually nothing.”

“Myers keeps making grudging, belated public relations moves and calling them reform,” Clohessy said in a statement.

Clohessy criticized Myers for allowing Fugee to continue to serve as a priest, sending him to work in a hospital in 2009 and later giving him promotions to prestigious positions within the archdiocese. He also criticized the archbishop for allowing Fugee to live in the Sacred Heart rectory for two years. Fugee was removed from that parish in February after The Record inquired about him living there.

‘Just one step’

Myers defended himself in the letter, saying that the archdiocese has an “exemplary record of addressing allegations against our clergy.” He wrote that Doran’s resignation is part of a larger plan that includes transferring the oversight of priests, presumably those who face abuse allegations, from the vicar general’s office to the judicial vicar of the archdiocese.

He also wrote that he plans to appoint a special adviser to the archdiocesan review board that hears complaints of sexual abuse by priests, and to provide it with additional resources to investigate those allegations.

“Appointing a new vicar general will be just one step in a comprehensive plan to review and, where necessary, strengthen our internal protocols and ensure we are doing everything we can to safeguard the children of our community,” Myers wrote.

He added that he has “personally removed 19 priests for substantiated allegations” of sexual abuse, and said he wrote the letter to assure parishioners that the archdiocese practices strict oversight of accused priests. The archdiocese, he said, also follows the mandates of a 2002 agreement among American bishops known as the Dallas Charter, which calls for the removal of priests from ministry for even one credible allegation of sexual abuse of a child.

“I want you to know just how seriously I take this lapse in our system and that I am committed to doing everything within my abilities to ensure that nothing is left to chance, that all appropriate resources and efforts are utilized in protecting our youngest parishioners,” he wrote.