NEW YORK
The Journal News
Jorge Fitz-Gibbon, jfitzgib@lohud.com June 9, 2017
Long before he was defrocked, the Rev. Francis Stinner was a familiar figure in his Somers neighborhood, walking his poodle along the narrow residential streets where local kids were frequently found playing stick ball, kickball or basketball.
Many of them were from Italian- and Irish-Catholic families, and they knew Stinner from the old St. Joseph’s Church in Croton Falls. Some would ultimately sit in his classes at John F. Kennedy Catholic High School, just a few miles away on Goldens Bridge Road, where he taught for years.
His home was a neatly-kept, one-story corner house that still sits there today. It is where he raped one of those boys.
“He would give me rides sometimes, buy me, like, soda or that type of thing. I’d be over to his house, and that’s when the incident happened,” said the then-12-year-old boy, now a middle-aged father and businessman.
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