MISSOURI
Columbia Daily Tribune
By BRENNAN DAVID
Saturday, May 11, 2013
The Archdiocese of Newark has paid $650,000 to settle molestation claims brought by five men against a former priest who also served in Boonville.
Gerald Howard, who was known as Carmine Sita while a priest in New Jersey in the late 1970s and early ’80s, was accused in a lawsuit of molesting the young men in the rectory of a Jersey City Catholic church, said Greg Gianforcaro, the victims’ attorney. The settlement was reached in mediation with the archdiocese.
“The abuse was bad,” Gianforcaro said. “These guys were sexually abused, and it was terrible.”
In 1982, Howard pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a boy in New Jersey, Gianforcaro said. That victim was not one of the five listed in the lawsuit, and he has since died of a drug overdose, he said.
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