NEW JERSEY
dotCommonweal

April 28, 2013, 6:04 pm

Posted by Lisa Fullam

This time in Newark, NJ. The bishop is Archbishop John Myers, and the offending priest is Michael Fugee, who admitted groping a 14 year-old boy 12 years ago. (He later recanted his confession, saying that he’d only confessed so he could go home sooner.) He was tried and convicted, but the conviction overturned on appeal based on inappropriate instructions to the jury. The appellate ruling did not question the validity of the confession. According to the NJ Star-Ledger, rather than re-try the case,

the prosecutor’s office allowed him to enter pre-trial intervention, a rehabilitation program for first offenders. At the same time, the prosecutor’s office secured an agreement that Fugee undergo counseling for sex offenders and have no unsupervised contact with children as long as he is a priest.

I infer that Fugee’s agreeing to this condition…