New Probe Renews Investigation of Rev. Michael Fugee
By Jeff Green
Archbishop John J. Myers said in a newspaper interview that Fugee’s alleged groping of a 13-year-old Wyckoff boy in 2001 presented a case that had “more grays than black and white.” But in stark contrast to that assertion, Bergen County prosecutors paint a picture of a priest who relentlessly preyed upon the boy, alleging in court documents newly released in a public-records request that, far from accidentally touching the boy in a mock wrestling match, Fugee deliberately pinned him down on five distinct occasions, groped his genitals and “lingered there” in spite of the boy’s protests. Prosecutors wrote in court briefs that the alleged victim became so paralyzed with fear of the priest that he would lock himself in his room whenever he visited and once, upon learning of Fugee’s arrival, he hid behind a refrigerator at the restaurant where he worked and pleaded with his boss to not let the priest know where he was. With the victim’s testimony, prosecutors embarked on a methodical hunt for evidence against Fugee, knocking on parishioners’ doors throughout Bergen County, interviewing dozens of people with knowledge of the alleged abuse and seeking records from what they described as a resistant Newark Archdiocese. The prosecutors’ intensive 2001 investigation parallels an ongoing probe of new charges against the priest, in which they have obtained more than 2,000 pages of archdiocesan records related to Fugee’s work history. Fugee was arrested in May on charges that he violated a court-ordered agreement never to minister to children by hearing confessions during youth retreats all throughout New Jersey. And just as in the earlier case, Prosecutor John L. Molinelli has said the archdiocese is “refusing” to turn over additional information. The case against Fugee, who first confessed to groping the boy, then recanted saying investigators intimidated him, has captured headlines for more than a decade. He was convicted of groping the boy, but the conviction was overturned a few years later. And for reasons that are far from clear — in spite of the fact the victim was willing to testify again — the Prosecutor’s Office elected to dismiss the charges and propose the agreement that banned his future ministry with children, rather than pursue a second trial. One newly released document revealed that prosecutors believed the archdiocese was having trouble following the agreement from the beginning. In the 2010 brief, prosecutors said that both Fugee and archdiocesan officials had “teetered” on a violation of the pact with his first assignment upon his return to ministry. Revelations in April of Fugee’s excursions with youth groups, in alleged defiance of that agreement, have sparked five resignations, including his own and that of a top archdiocese official. The scandal also has prompted numerous calls for Myers to resign over his handling of the priest. Leaders in the archdiocese, which signed the agreement with Fugee, say they had no knowledge of the priest’s youth retreat excursions. Church officials also say they never were in an adequate position to supervise him. “We are not a police agency,” said a prominent defense lawyer hired to represent the archbishop in the Fugee case. Fugee’s lawyer insists that his client didn’t violate the supervisory agreement and that prosecutors have been “hammering” him for years. Overturned in 2006 A jury found Fugee, then an assistant pastor at St. Elizabeth of Hungary Church in Wyckoff, guilty of aggravated criminal sexual contact in 2003. The conviction was overturned in 2006 because of a judicial error. After Fugee completed the two-year program that ended with the dismissal of the groping case, he sought to have his criminal record expunged, a move that, had it been granted, would have sealed documents in the case from the public. Prosecutors vehemently contested the 2010 filing to expunge his record. Assistant Prosecutor Demetra Maurice, who tried Fugee’s original case and heads the special victims unit, wrote in an opposition brief of “an enhanced need for the availability of the records in order to protect the public,” given his agreement to no longer minister to children. A judge agreed with prosecutors and rejected Fugee’s request. In the same brief, Maurice expressed concerns about the supervisory agreement, noting that Fugee’s assignment as a chaplain at St. Michael’s Hospital in Newark was “potentially violative to his restriction as it pertained to children.” Hospital administrators learned of his past through press inquiries, after which they requested the priest’s removal. “Both Fugee and the archdiocese recently teetered on a potential violation of his agreed to restrictions,” prosecutors wrote of the hospital position, which they further described as a “potentially dangerous assignment.” In February, after Fugee left the hospital, parishioners of a Rochelle Park church learned that Fugee had moved into the church rectory. He was removed shortly afterward. In more than a decade of legal briefings involving the priest, prosecutors have described a manipulative Fugee. During the period of alleged abuse, from 1999 to 2000, Fugee sometimes struck while acting as the young boy’s chaperone, prosecutors said. On one occasion, he abused the boy on the day of his 14th birthday when his mother was on a church retreat, prosecutors said. When the boy hid in his room, Fugee did not relent, prosecutors wrote in court briefings. He passed notes under his bedroom door asking him to “come out and play,” they said. During the last incident of alleged abuse, the priest attended a family vacation to Virginia with the boy and his mother, according to the documents. While she was taking a shower in their hotel room, Fugee “initiated a wrestling match, pinning [the boy] against the side of the bed and touching him on the crotch,” prosecutors wrote. The boy opened up to Janice Thomas, owner of the restaurant where he worked. He told her Fugee touched him in “really disgusting ways” and “adamantly insisted the touching was not innocuous,” according to prosecutors. Just before his 2001 arrest, Fugee admitted to two instances of abuse. Shortly afterward, he steadfastly denied the allegations and again used his status as a priest for his advantage, prosecutors argued. He rallied a base of supporters who “branded the boy a liar,” they said. “People believed his words and after the allegations came out, he put his own spin [on] things and his victim became re-victimized by the community,” prosecutors said. Michael D’Alessio, Fugee’s lawyer, rejected prosecutors’ description of Fugee, saying a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation following his trial gave him a “clean bill of health. “If you’ve ever met the guy, he’s the least manipulative guy you’ve ever met in your life,” D’Alessio said. The lawyer declined to comment on the details of the original case, except to say it was dismissed and that “prosecutors have been hammering this guy for years.” D’Alessio accused prosecutors of being “overzealous” in their new investigation. He was especially critical when they arrested Fugee at his residence in a Newark parish without first allowing him a chance to turn himself in and make bail arrangements in advance. “When you set out to humiliate somebody, you’re overstepping your bounds as a prosecutor,” D’Alessio said about the arrest. Alleged victim speaks Although they are pursuing new charges that Fugee violated the supervisory agreement, it’s not clear why prosecutors elected not to retry Fugee when his first conviction was reversed. The alleged victim, now 27, said in a recent interview that when he met with prosecutors after the 2006 appellate ruling, he said he would have testified at a retrial. He also said he didn’t mind if they chose to put Fugee into the supervisory agreement instead of a new trial, as long as the priest was restricted from working with children. “I would have supported any decision the Prosecutor’s Office would have made,” he said. “If that meant they would have needed me to testify, I would have.” Molinelli did not respond to interview requests for this article. In the 2010 brief, assistant prosecutor Maurice wrote that her office did not back down from its case against Fugee, noting that the priest’s confession was admissible in court and that she had won an initial conviction based on what were then model jury instructions. After the 2003 conviction was overturned, the Prosecutor’s Office consented to dismiss the charge against Fugee, Maurice wrote, solely because he agreed to no longer work with children. “The state agreed to the [Pretrial Intervention] resolution of this case only with certain public protections in place,” Maurice wrote. She also said the archdiocese “was in the best position to supervise” Fugee. Molinelli has never answered questions about why his office did not seek to retry Fugee. ‘Should have retried’ If prosecutors were so concerned that Fugee was a risk, they should have retried him, said Michael Critchley, a criminal defense lawyer hired by the archdiocese to assist with the Fugee case. “If, in fact, you have a person you feel is guilty, prosecute them,” he said. The archdiocese has not offered specifics on what it did, if anything, to supervise Fugee. Critchley said the church did “as best we could under the circumstances.” But Critchley also advanced Myers’ argument, in his June interview in the National Catholic Register, that the archdiocese should not have been in a position of supervising Fugee. Myers also said he would never again sign such an agreement, which Critchley critiqued as “ripe for good faith problems of interpretation.” Because Fugee recanted his confession and succeeded in overturning the conviction on appeal, Myers said in the interview, the case had “more grays than black and white.” In 2009 he returned Fugee to ministry. “The courts have the probation department to enforce whatever measures they want,” Critchley said. “We are not a police agency. Don’t hold us responsible,” he continued. “We’re not guarantors of where a person is 24 hours a day.” Asked why the archdiocese signed it to begin with, Critchley said, “No one anticipated these problems.” He declined to comment on the prosecutor’s demands for additional information related to the new charges against Fugee, but he said the archdiocese is “fully cooperating” with the prosecutor’s investigation. The archdiocese and Fugee’s own lawyer said that his assignments at St. Michael’s hospital and the Rochelle Park rectory never violated the agreement. Jim Goodness, a spokesman for Myers, said church officials felt St. Michael’s was an “appropriate” assignment for Fugee because the hospital did not have a pediatric unit. The archdiocese informed its head of pastoral care about Fugee’s restrictions, but Goodness said he did not know whether that priest was provided a copy of Fugee’s agreement with prosecutors. Email: greenj@northjersey.com
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