BishopAccountability.org
 
  Chatham Twp. Man Faces Testing after Sexual Abuse of Relative, Girl

Star-Ledger (Newark, New Jersey)
January 3, 1996

A 38-year-old Chatham Township man will be evaluated to determine if he is a compulsive sex offender under a plea bargain entered yesterday in Morristown after he admitted molesting a young relative and the daughter of a family friend.

Dominick J. Fiorenza admitted to Superior Court Judge Donald Collester that he induced a niece to engage in sex acts with him on various occasions between 1981 and 1984, starting when she was about 9 years old and he was about 25. Other offenses with the girl took place between 1988 and 1991, he told the judge.

Fiorenza also admitted touching the genitals of an 8-year-old girl in Chatham Township between November 1991 and April 1992. "It was compulsive. I can't tell you what the purpose was," he told the judge. Under the plea bargain arranged by attorney Milton Malkin, Fiorenza must be evaluated at the state's Adult Diagnostic and Treatment Center for sex offenders in Avenel. If he is diagnosed as a compulsive, repetitive sex offender, Fiorenza will be committed for a minimum of five years of treatment, with no chance for early release.

If he is not diagnosed as a compulsive offender, a 10-year prison term with four years of parole ineligibility will be imposed, the judge said.

Morris County First Assistant Prosecutor Karin Kelly-Weisert said she insisted the potential Avenel sentence have a minimum term after learning the Rev. John G. Pisarcik, former pastor of a Roman Catholic parish in Rockaway, was paroled Saturday from the Avenel facility.

The priest, who admitted sexually molesting two boys who attended his Sacred Heart of Jesus Church, was sentenced in January 1993 to five years of treatment, but released two years early, she noted.

"It was the first time in 10 years that I am aware someone was paroled early from an Avenel sentence," Kelly-Weisert said, explaining parole officials justified Pisarcik's early release to the work credits he earned at the facility. Pisarcik is being released to a church-run program in New Mexico that caters to priests with psycho-sexual problems.

Like Pisarcik, Fiorenza has been named as a defendant in civil suits filed on behalf of his victims. In March, the 19-year-old victim sued her uncle in Essex County claiming he began sexually abusing her when she was a young child. The woman's 22-year-old brother filed a separate action in October in Morris County, charging that he also was sexually abused. His claims were not the subject of criminal proceedings.

Both suits seek punitive damages from Fiorenza and his parents, Jack and Julia Fiorenza of Short Hills, contending they knew or should have known of the abuse and stopped it.

Kelly-Weisert said the elder Fiorenzas were never the subject of a criminal investigation. She noted that when the unrelated victim first told her parents about being molested in 1994, the complaint was greeted with skepticism until his niece revealed she also had been victimized.

"Believe her. He did it to me when I was her age," she reported the woman as saying. Kelly-Weisert said the victims' complaints prompted Fiorenza's arrest in August 1994. He is free on $100,000 bail pending sentencing by Collester on Feb. 2.

 
 

Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.