ABUSE TRACKER

WOODBRIDGE, NJ — A popular parish priest accused of sexual misconduct won’t be returning to his parish, but would be given a chance to say his final mass before departing for the Philippines. Reverend Edgardo Abano, 52, of St. Frances Cabrini Church in Piscataway is leaving the church, but would celebrate mass for the last time on June 8. The website www.saveourpastor.org states that Abano’s 12 noon farewell mass will be held at the St. Frances Cabrini school gym followed by a farewell reception in the cafeteria. The website was created by his supporters in a bid to clear the pastor’s name. Abano, well loved in his parish, was arrested in October of 2007 on charges of sexual misconduct. A Filipino employee of the Metuchen diocese Glenn Obrero filed a complaint with his superiors in 2005 that Abano had repeatedly touched his chest and buttocks in the church rectory. Obrero, 26, was then a seminarian at the Immaculate Conception Seminary in New Jersey. Abano has denied the allegations. In October 2007, Abano was picked up by agents of the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office Sex Crimes/ Child Abuse Unit and the Piscataway Police Department’s Special Victim’s Unit. Since his arrest, Abano – who was ordained in 1985 in the U.S. — has taken a leave of absence. He is free on $1,500 bail. St. Frances Cabrini is the fifth New Jersey parish he has served; he has been a priest there since 1992. A jury that heard the testimonies of both Abano and Obrero in February this year returned a “no bill” verdict, which means they found no sufficient evidence for the prosecutor to file a case. This was based largely on revelations that the translation of a phone conversation between Abano and Obrero had some inconsistencies. On the strength of this decision, Abano’s supporters within the parish as well as the Filipino American community have asked the diocese for his reinstatement. They have written letters to Bishop Paul Gregory Bootkoski of the Metuchen diocese expressing the hope that with the jury decision, Abano would be resuming his obligations as a parish priest. Instead, they were surprised to learn that Abano won’t be returning to the parish and would be leaving the US shortly after the June 8 mass. “He has done nothing to warrant these allegations. We must all remember to keep ourselves focused on the fact that these are just allegations and must be proven false. He has been unjustly removed and our Bishop should stand behind him and give Fr. Ed his support and reinstate him back to his parish,” says one of the messages of support in the website. – GMANews.TV

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Rev. Edgardo Abano

A priest at a Catholic church in Piscataway was arrested and charged with repeatedly inappropriately touching a man working for the Diocese of Metuchen, Middlesex County Prosecutor Bruce Kaplan announced today.

The Rev. Edgardo Abano, 51, pastor of Saint Francis Cabrini Roman Catholic Church on Netherwood Avenue, was arrested Tuesday and charged with criminal sexual conduct, a fourth-degree crime that carries a maximum sentence of 18 months prison upon conviction.

Authorities began investigating Abano on Sept. 25, after receiving information from the diocese, Kaplan said in a statement released today. The employee told investigators that Abano touched him inappropriately on the chest and buttocks on various occasions in 2005, Kaplan said.

All of the incidents occurred at the church rectory, authorities said. Abano, who was ordained a priest in May 1985, was released on $1,500 bail.

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Illuminated by the lights of a dozen news cameras, a former Roman Catholic priest apologized publicly Thursday to the woman he and six other priests seduced 10 years ago, when she was his teen-age parishioner.

At another news conference Thursday, Archbishop Roger Mahony said the responsibility for apologies rests on “priests who misused their vow of priestly celibacy,” not on the archdiocese, which supervised the seven and advised one of them to stay out of the United States for several years after the scandal broke.

The apology that was issued Thursday came from Santiago (Henry) Tamayo, who read haltingly from his statement as the woman, Rita Milla, sat on his right and struggled to keep back tears.

“I had to go public and tell the whole truth. I knew that a cheap absolution would not undo the evil of the past,” said Tamayo.

“I had her full trust and confidence, yet I got sexually involved with Rita,” he said. “Weakened by the sense of my own sins, I failed as a pastor to rescue her from getting involved with the other priests. I am truly sorry for the pain, the anxieties and the sufferings she has endured all these years.”

Milla said she wished Tamayo, whom she had met in a South Bay parish, “had come out with the truth in the beginning when things were so hard. . . . I believe that he might have done that, were it not for the church.”

The emotional exchange between Tamayo, 56, and Milla, now 29, was the first time the two had met since Milla filed suit in 1984, nearly two years after she gave birth to a child fathered by one of the priests.

She said that her child’s father, whose whereabouts are still unknown, is “a coward. He should come out and admit it.”

The 1984 suit, naming Tamayo, the other priests and the archdiocese, alleged fraud, clergy malpractice and conspiracy. It was dismissed after the priests disappeared and the archdiocese was excused as a defendant.

The archdiocese knew Tamayo had gone to the Philippines, but did not tell Milla’s attorneys. It continued to pay Tamayo a monthly income for much of the four years he was abroad, while urging him to stay out of the United States and settle in the Philippines, according to letters Tamayo provided to The Times and Milla’s attorney, Gloria Allred.

“I felt terrible inside,” Tamayo said, “but did not have the strength to challenge my religious superiors. I was frightened and above all I wanted to remain a Roman Catholic priest. So I stayed in hiding abroad for years,” until, under stress and after suffering several strokes, “I could no longer stand it.”

Allred said she is still evaluating the documents Tamayo provided to determine if legal options are still open to Milla.

“To me it smacks of a cover-up,” said Allred. “What else would you call it?”

Mahony answered questions at a press conference announcing the first issue of a Spanish-language church newspaper, Vida Nueva, mailed to 110,000 households.

He said he did not know what had gone on before he came to the archdiocese in 1985, “but we do not advise priests to flee their responsibility. We advise them to get their legal counsel and to work closely with their attorneys.”

The church, he said, is always “very grieved when anyone in consecrated life breaks their vows,” but “meaningful” apologies must come from “the people who did the actions.”

Asked about the archdiocese’s advice that Tamayo stay in the Philippines, he said, “I don’t think it was a matter of cover-up, precisely.”

Milla had told The Times she had done Tamayo’s bidding–going to his family in the Philippines to give birth–to protect the priests and the church. The Caesarean delivery at Tamayo’s brother’s clinic was complicated by high blood pressure and seizures.

“I almost died protecting their reputation. . . . I wanted to do things quietly. If their reputation was hurt, it was their fault for not taking care of things.”

Allred said Thursday, “We think it is the height of hypocrisy for the church to preach on one hand family values, but on the other hand to take an active role in assisting priests who abuse their position of trust.”

Tamayo also thanked his former parishioners in several South Bay churches, some of whom contributed to a defense fund before he left the country in 1984, he said.

“I feel much better,” he said after his apology. “I wish all my brother priests will come forward and feel as I do.”

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On a January night, after spilling out his story, Father Henry Tamayo walked out into the garden and gazed for a long time at the winter stars.

“Where did it go?” he asked.

A friend wondered what Tamayo was looking for.

“I had a weight on my shoulders,” Tamayo told him, “and it’s lifted.”

There was no such epiphany, no such date or place for Rita Milla, now 29, the young woman who said she was seduced first by Tamayo, then by six other priests. She later sued them and the archdiocese for fraud and clergy malpractice.

Yet she, too, has gradually felt herself freed of burdens: of feeling guilty, of being accused of making it all up, of being called by a bishop a woman with a “bad reputation.” And Tamayo’s coming forward “made me feel that I wasn’t crazy, thinking all this conspiracy stuff.”

For Tamayo and Milla, once priest and parishioner, and for a time lovers, the years since the 1984 lawsuit brought some common experiences: Both said they were despondent and once considered suicide; both saw their families damaged by the scandal; both say they want the church to take responsibility, and both became disillusioned about elements of their church.

As a devout teen-ager, Milla went to church each morning, and said she spent four months in a convent after high school. Since 1984, though, she has not set foot in a church, nor have her parents, her sisters, or her daughter by one of the priests. “I’m afraid of going to church, any church actually. I gave myself so much to the church that I don’t want to put myself or my kids in that situation again.”

Tamayo spent months in the Philippines when, even though he was acting as a priest, he struggled with self-reproach and “couldn’t pray.” He has always wanted to apologize to Milla, yet he was “sorry” her lawsuit had named the archdiocese as well.

In the years after the suit was filed, as friends fell away and “even a few relatives didn’t believe me,” Milla married, then divorced a man who couldn’t cope with the scandal. She has since remarried a “perfect” man, and they have a 1-year-old son.

But she always wanted her story to be corroborated, to help others in her quandary, she said, perhaps organizing a support group or writing a book. “It’s good that Tamayo showed up because it’s always been in my conscience that this could be happening to somebody else.”

As a teen-ager, “I was very trusting and I wanted to be very obedient to the church.” She was also shy, confused and sometimes depressed, she said, which made her vulnerable to the sexual advances of priests.

All that happened to “a different person. I don’t think it could happen to me now.”

“I’d like to see the bishop and the church come out and say that it was true, say that they did want to cover it up. I’d like them to offer child support, not just to myself but to anybody else who comes to them saying they have a little one from a priest.”

The toughest part has been telling her daughter all this. “I try to give her information little by little.” For now, the girl is content, Milla said, to see “only a picture” of her father; “she wouldn’t want to talk to him.”

But the girl also asked a few months ago whether he had left because she was “a bad baby,” said Milla. “The kind of person he is, running off and not caring about her, I think I was better off without him.”

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