NEW JERSEY
The New York Times
By RUSS BUETTNER
May 12, 2013
COLTS NECK, N.J. — With 10 children knelt around the altar for their first communion and the pews at St. Mary’s Church packed with families gathered for Mother’s Day, there was little sign on Sunday of the turmoil that has struck the parish, and threatens the Archdiocese of Newark.
Just two weeks earlier, the parishioners learned that a priest working with their church’s youth groups had been barred from being around children unsupervised — a restriction that he accepted to avoid retrial on a sexual abuse charge.
“I think everyone was just shocked; there’s no other way to put it,” said Darren Barreiro, a father of three girls, as he left Mass on Sunday.
The priest, Michael Fugee, was convicted in 2003 of criminal sexual conduct stemming from allegations that he had groped a boy’s crotch during several wrestling horseplay encounters when he was associate pastor at St. Elizabeth Church in Wyckoff, N.J.
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