NEW JERSEY
The Record
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2014 LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY FEBRUARY 9, 2014
BY JEFF GREEN
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD
A day after the Rev. Michael Fugee signed an agreement with prosecutors in October in which he confessed for a second time to having sexually abused a teenage boy in Wyckoff, two of his most ardent supporters say he proclaimed his innocence to them, possibly violating the agreement and risking jail.
As part of the agreement with the prosecutors, Fugee had promised to stop denying the abuse, which took place over several years more than a decade ago.
Two of the priest’s supporters, Michael and Amy Lenehan, said that on Oct. 31, the day after Fugee signed the agreement with the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, led by John L. Molinelli, Fugee told them in a telephone conversation that he had never abused the boy. He said he had agreed to confess so he could avoid conviction on charges that could have sent him to jail, they said.
Fugee’s remarks to the couple represented his second recantation during a legal entanglement that has endured for more than a decade. The twists and turns have disturbed congregants in several dioceses who discovered that a priest who’s been accused of molestation was again in their midst and again in contact with young people — despite a legal agreement that he no longer work with children. It also ensnared the Archdiocese of Newark, which had agreed to enforce the accord and to monitor the priest.
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