NEW JERSEY
U.S. Catholic
By Nicholas Cafardi
Guest blog
It is difficult to understand what is going on in the Archdiocese of Newark these days. A priest of that archdiocese, Father Michael Fugee, was charged with sexual assault on a minor in 2001. He confessed to the police that he had grabbed the young boy’s crotch while wrestling with him on two occasions. At his first trial, he was convicted of aggravated criminal sexual contact. That conviction was overturned by an appeals court on the grounds of improper jury instructions. Rather than retry Father Fugee, in 2007, the public prosecutor entered into an agreement with him and the Newark archdiocese which says, among other things, that:
“It is agreed and understood that Michael Fugee shall not accept any position with the Archdiocese of Newark or any Archdiocese under which he is assigned and/or placed that allows him to have any unsupervised contact with or to supervise or minister to any child/minor under the age of 18 or work in any position in which children are involved. This includes but is not limited to, presiding over a parish, involvement with a youth group, religious education/parochial school, CCD, confessions of children, youth choir, youth retreats and daycare.”
Imagine, then, the surprise of the folks in the Newark archdiocese when they found out that Father Fugee had been going on youth retreats and pilgrimages and was back to hearing the confessions of minors, in private, as all confessions must be.
That sure sounds like a violation of what the archdiocese and Father Fugee agreed to in 2007. The archbishop of Newark does not see it that way. He has written a letter to the faithful claiming that Father Fugee is back in ministry under the terms of the Dallas Charter which requires diocese to restore the reputation of priests in situations where there is a “not guilty” verdict or a dismissal of charges and the diocese’s own review board has found that no sexual abuse has occurred.
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