MASSACHUSETTS
Telegram & Gazette
Posted Oct. 11, 2015
Growing up, Stephen Kelley idolized his big brother Bobby.
The youngest of nine kids raised in the Burncoat neighborhood, Stephen loved spending time with the sibling 19 years his senior. Bobby took him to the beach and out for ice cream. He bought him his first bike; when it was stolen, Bobby promptly bought him another. Outgoing and smart, Bobby was always there to listen.
“He was just a really good guy,” said Stephen, 56, of Holden. “He was my hero. I admired him so much.”
In 1968, Bobby Kelley became the Rev. Robert E. Kelley and would be assigned to churches in Southbridge, Leominster and Gardner. His large Irish-Catholic clan was thrilled to have a priest in the family and parishioners adored him.
Until they learned the unthinkable: The charismatic, popular Robert E. Kelley was an insatiable pedophile.
In 1990, the priest called “the Pied Piper” by a former parishioner pleaded guilty to six counts of rape of a child and served seven years in state prison. Then, again in 2003, Kelley pleaded guilty to raping two young girls and was sentenced to five to seven years. In a deposition he gave during a civil suit, he admitted that he sexually molested “50 to 100” girls while he was an associate pastor from 1976 to 1983 at St. Cecilia’s Church in Leominster.
Today, Robert Kelley is 75. In June, he was defrocked by the Vatican. Stephen Kelley said his brother is broke, broken and living in a Boston homeless shelter.
And while some may consider his fate divine retribution, Stephen said he’s angry that the Worcester diocese revoked his brother’s retirement benefits and left the elderly man adrift, with barely enough money to feed himself.
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