WILMINGTON (DE)
The News Journal
BY BETH MILLER AND STEVEN CHURCH / The News Journal
10/01/2005Bishop Michael Saltarelli made a "rare exception" to the diocese's 1985 ban on sexual abusers in ministry when he permitted convicted abuser Robert Hermley to work at the Little Sisters of the Poor retirement community near Newark in 2002, officials of the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington said Friday.
Hermley pleaded guilty in 1982 to indecent assault on two Philadelphia boys, ages 13 and 14, after he was arrested while watching an X-rated movie with them at a drive-in theater in Trevose, Pa. At the time, he was director of college guidance at Padua Academy, an all-girls high school in Wilmington.
Hermley did not respond to a request for an interview. A man who answered the phone at his retirement residence said Hermley would not comment.
In 2001, officials of Hermley's religious order, the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, asked Saltarelli to grant permission for the then-74-year-old priest to return to ministry at the Little Sisters of the Poor on Salem Church Road. At the same time, they told the diocese about Hermley's past conviction -- the first the diocese knew of it, according to spokesman Robert Krebs.