NEW JERSEY
The Star-Ledger

By Mark Mueller/The Star-Ledger
on May 10, 2013

The Archdiocese of Newark has paid $650,000 to settle molestation claims brought by five men against a former New Jersey priest now awaiting trial on unrelated sex charges in Missouri.

The settlement, announced Thursday by a lawyer for the men, recalls one of the darker chapters of the archdiocese’s role in the clergy sex abuse crisis.

The Rev. Carmen Sita pleaded guilty in 1982 to sexually assaulting a teenage boy at St. Aloysius Church in Jersey City. Sentenced to five months’ probation, Sita changed his name to Gerald Howard and was soon shuffled to a parish in the Diocese of Jefferson City, Mo.

The Newark archbishop at the time, Peter Gerety, never informed the public of the name change. Howard would go on to molest at least three more children in Missouri, authorities said. Charged in…