NEW JERSEY
The Jersey Journal
Monday, October 17, 2005
By JASON DEL REY
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER
Monsignor Peter Cheplic's reassignment last year to a Weehawken church came after archdiocese officials found "credible" an accusation of sexual abuse against him, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Newark said.
Cheplic is now under investigation again after new accusations from two men who said they were abused by the priest in the 1980s and early 1990s. Cheplic voluntarily stepped down in August from his post as parochial vicar of St. Henry's Church in Bayonne during the investigation, archdiocese spokesman Jim Goodness said.
Cheplic was pastor at St. Aloysius Church in Jersey City in 2002 when Martin Kansky told archdiocese officials that the priest had molested him at a shore house in 1978, when Kansky was 18 and Cheplic was pastor of St. Matthew's Church in Ridgefield.
Goodness said an "announcement from the pulpit" was made at St. Aloysius to notify parishioners that Cheplic had been removed while the archdiocese investigated "an allegation of sexual misconduct." During the investigation, Cheplic was not allowed to be in the ministry, Goodness said.
The investigation found the allegation "credible," according to a letter Kansky received in 2003, but Newark Archbishop John J. Myers decided to reinstate Cheplic into ministry because it was the first known incident against the cleric and did not involve a minor, Goodness said.