NEW JERSEY
The Record
SUNDAY, JULY 21, 2013
BY JEFF GREEN
STAFF WRITER
Voicing a view repeated often among parishioners in defense of an embattled priest, the Newark archbishop last month downplayed sex-abuse allegations against the Rev. Michael Fugee, saying his behavior was “ill advised, but did not rise to the level of sexual abuse.”
Archbishop John J. Myers said in a newspaper interview that Fugee’s alleged groping of a 13-year-old Wyckoff boy in 2001 presented a case that had “more grays than black and white.”
But in stark contrast to that assertion, Bergen County prosecutors paint a picture of a priest who relentlessly preyed upon the boy, alleging in court documents newly released in a public-records request that, far from accidentally touching the boy in a mock wrestling match, Fugee deliberately pinned him down on five distinct occasions, groped his genitals and “lingered there” in spite of the boy’s protests.
Prosecutors wrote in court briefs that the alleged victim became so paralyzed with fear of the priest that he would lock himself in his room whenever he visited and once, upon learning of Fugee’s arrival, he hid behind a refrigerator at the restaurant where he worked and pleaded with his boss to not let the priest know where he was.
With the victim’s testimony, prosecutors embarked on a methodical hunt for evidence against Fugee, knocking on parishioners’ doors throughout Bergen County, interviewing dozens of people with knowledge of the alleged abuse and seeking records from what they described as a resistant Newark Archdiocese.
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