NEW JERSEY
Huffington Post

Michael D’Antonio

Often lost in the shadow of the Archdiocese of New York, and its larger-than-life cardinal, Timothy Dolan, the Catholic Archdiocese of Newark, N.J., is attracting national attention these days for all the wrong reasons. It is now the site of one of the more pathetic episodes in official Catholicism’s sex abuse scandal, a case so badly mishandled that it reveals, by example, why the hierarchy can’t seem to ends its long running crisis.

As reported by the state’s largest newspaper, the Star-Ledger of Newark, the case began with a 13-year-old boy’s complaint that he had been sexually abused by the Rev. Michael Fugee in 2001. Father Fugee confessed, then recanted, and was subsequently convicted of aggravated criminal sexual contact. This verdict was overturned in 2007 by an appellate court that found the jury had not been properly instructed by the trial judge. To…