Fr. Alfred N. Pettinger
Pettinger was named publicly in the NE Attorney General’s report released in 11/2021. There are two known victims, both 13-year-old girls. The incidents occurred 1986-1988 and 1990, with reports to the diocese in 1987 and 1989. Pettinger was moved to another parish after the earliest report of his behavior, after which the second girl was victimized. He focused obsessively on each girl, with phone calls and letters, inappropriately discussing sexual matters with them and emotional manipulation. He provided alcohol to one of the girls and gave the other a pornographic magazine. Pettinger was sent to treatment in 1989, after the second victim came forward. He was returned to ministry in 1990 and discovered in 1995 to have an addiction to pornography. He would paste photos of the faces of his former female middle school students on the faces of adult women in pornographic magazines. Pettinger was suspended in 1996, his faculties removed.
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