NEW JERSEY
NorthJersey.com
Sunday, January 29, 2006
By JOHN CHADWICK
STAFF WRITER
James Hanley still has the gregarious personality his young victims found so disarming.
Standing on a Paterson street, he is the picture of bonhomie, telling stories, cracking jokes and playfully barking, "Get outta here" to an elderly female friend who had pulled up in a car and shouted, "You staying out of trouble?"
It has been almost three years since Hanley was forced from the priesthood. Yet he wears a cross, attends Mass and has a bumper sticker on his Toyota Camry: "My Boss is a Jewish Carpenter."
"If anything, the Lord has said ... 'Don't worry, I'll stand by you,' " he said.
But even divine intervention can't undo his past.
James Thomas Hanley is the most notorious clerical sex abuser in northern New Jersey.