DELAWARE
The News Journal
BY BETH MILLER AND STEVEN CHURCH / The News Journal
09/30/2005A Catholic priest who pleaded guilty to indecent assault on two teenage boys in 1982, while on the staff at Padua Academy in Wilmington, was reinstated to ministry the same year and as recently as 2002 was serving at the Little Sisters of the Poor retirement complex in Ogletown, officials acknowledged Thursday.
Diocese of Wilmington officials say their policy since 1985 has been that no priest with credible allegations should be allowed to work in active ministry here. Thursday, they said they needed time to look into the facts surrounding the ministry of the Rev. Robert L. Hermley, 78, now of Childs, Md., who is a member of the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, an autonomous religious order within the diocese.
Hermley was arrested in 1982 in Trevose, Pa., while watching X-rated movies at a local drive-in theater with two Philadelphia boys, ages 13 and 14. Nineteen pornographic magazines also were found in the car. Hermley, who at the time was director of college guidance at Padua, an all-girls high school, pleaded guilty to indecent assault. Charges of indecent exposure, corrupting minors and open lewdness were dropped. Hermley was given three years' probation by a Bucks County, Pa., judge and released into the custody of his religious order, which reinstated him into ministry and assigned him to duty in Vienna, Va.