NEW JERSEY
Star-Ledger
Friday, December 31, 2004
BY MARGARET McHUGH
Star-Ledger Staff
A suspended priest charged with molesting teenage boys while working in Morris County had been blackballed 10 years ago by the Archdiocese of Newark when church officials determined he had committed "sexual misconduct" against two males, an archdiocesan spokesman said yesterday.
Richard Mieliwocki, 58, left the Catholic church and became a social worker, continuing to deal with young men. He avoided having his license suspended in 1999 for inappropriate behavior by agreeing to weekly monitoring for three years, a consent order showed.
Mieliwocki's past only now is catching up to him, and his case shows how someone with a checkered history can move from job to job without detection. Two of his employers said they knew nothing of the allegations against Mieliwocki when they hired him.
"He went under the radar screen, and he's been passed along and passed along. There's something unconscionable about that," said the Rev. Joseph Hennen, director of the Daytop Village drug-treatment center in Mendham. Authorities say Mieliwocki victimized four of the center's residents.
Newark Archdiocesan spokesman Jim Goodness revealed yesterday that Mieliwocki was removed from duty in February 1994 after the archdiocese found credence in two men's claims that Mieliwocki abused them beginning in 1988 at Our Lady of Sorrows Church in South Orange.
Posted by kshaw at December 31, 2004 08:20 AM