MELVILLE (NY)
Newsday
February 27, 2018
By Zachary R. Dowdy
[Note from BishopAccountability.org: See the Suffolk County Grand Jury Report and the section on Fr. Michael Hands (Priest W in the report).]
Hands’ death comes just days before he was to be sentenced on a new child sex abuse charge.
Michael Hands, a former priest who served prison time for sexually abusing a 14-year-old Long Island boy in August 2000, was found dead of an apparent suicide in his jail cell upstate Tuesday while awaiting sentencing on new sex-abuse charges, authorities said.
A spokesman for Saratoga County said that Hands, 51, formerly of Greenwich, Connecticut was found dead in his cell at the county jail in Ballston Spa at 1:45 a.m. during a routine check of inmates and was believed to have killed himself. Saratoga County officials said an autopsy would be performed to determine the cause of death.
Hands was a key witness in a 2002 grand jury investigation, conducted by Suffolk County prosecutors, that led to a 182-page report alleging that priests in the Diocese of Rockville Centre abused children over decades. No indictments resulted from the probe, however, and the statutes of limitations for some of the offenses alleged had expired.
The state Commission of Correction, which looks into all in-custody deaths in the state, confirmed it is investigating Hands’ death at the Saratoga jail.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.