NEW JERSEY
The Star-Ledger
By Tom Moran/ The Star-Ledger
on August 14, 2013
The story is familiar by now, but no less infuriating. Newark Archbishop John J. Myers hears a credible complaint of sexual abuse against a priest. He hides that fact. He protects the priest. He doesn’t tell police.
And instead of stopping the abuse, he allows the abuser to search for a fresh victim among the children of the faithful, the little souls he should be protecting.
“I don’t want his resignation,” said the mother of one victim. “I want Bishop Myers to go to jail.”
Her name is Joanne Ward, she lives outside Toledo, Ohio, and she knows that’s not going to happen, despite the convincing evidence in freshly released court documents that Myers flat-out lied this time to protect the accused abuser.
But Ward wants to the world to know about Myers, at least. So she came to Newark yesterday with her husband and stood outside his office holding a poster-sized picture of her boy when he was 8 years old, the year she says he became a sexual play thing to a priest in the Peoria, Ill., diocese where Myers was in charge.
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