BishopAccountability.org
	Retired Priest Resigns after Child-Abuse Claims Come to Light By Amy Saltzman North of Boston Blog March 3, 2011 http://blogs.wickedlocal.com/shorelines/2011/03/02/retired-priest-resigns-after-child-abuse-claims-come-to-light/#axzz1FXKaXATO Marblehead resident Frank Huntress, a retired priest who served in Malden, Marblehead and Swampscott churches, voluntarily resigned from the priesthood earlier this month after two separate child-abuse allegations 20 years apart became known to the local diocese. Huntress, 77, who in his retirement has remained active at his local Episcopal branch of St. Michael's in Marblehead as well as the Church of the Holy Name in Swampscott, was previously arrested in 1994 for sexual abuse of a child in England where he was a member of the clergy at St. Matthew's in Lincolnshire, England. The case never went to trial, perhaps at the request of the child's family, suggested Rev. Canon Mally Lloyd of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. But the incident was reported to British police, leading to his arrest. Huntress then retired in 1995. The sexual abuse complaint, however, never crossed the Atlantic, and Huntress' record was clean of this former charge as he returned back to work in 1995, serving at All Saints in Dorchester, according to officials at the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. So no one in the states knew that he had been arrested and charged with abusing a child while overseas. The incident was only discovered in the last few months, after another victim emerged right here in the U.S. and the Diocese conducted an in-depth investigation. The victim, who came to the Diocese this past October, waited 36 years to report that Huntress had abused him or her as a child back in 1974, 20 years prior to the priest's England arrest. "You have to respect the victim's process," Rev. Lloyd said. And the reverend is right; it's the victim's choice whether or when to report such incidents. But this record of abuse disappearing from one country to the next just doesn't seem right. How many priests have avoided persecution by fleeing back and forth to different countries? How many more victims are there? There has to be a strict standard for reporting such matters internationally. At the very least congregations should give each other a heads up if something seems funny.
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