By Bob Holt
New Jersey Newsroom
November 22, 2011
www.newjerseynewsroom.com/state/st-josephs-church-mendham-nj-site-of-vandalized-memorial-to-sex-abuse-victims
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Police say a man destroyed a memorial at a church in New Jersey that was dedicated to the victims of child sexual abuse.
Gordon Ellis, 37, of Mendham, destroyed the memorial, a 400-pound black basalt millstone with a sledgehammer at St. Joseph's Church Friday.
According to the Daily Record, the memorial was dedicated in April 2004 "to the victims of sexual abuse "at St. Joseph's and everywhere." The parish once housed James T. Hanley, a defrocked priest who admitted molesting about a dozen children years ago.
NJ.com reports that Hanley was removed from the priesthood in 2003 after admitting that he sexually abused about a dozen children in parishes between Mendham and Pompton Plains between 1968 and 1982. Hanley never saw jail time because the statute of limitations on his offenses had expired. Paterson settled lawsuits with 21 of Hanley's accusers in 2004 for around $5 million.
According to bishop-accountability.org, Hanley spent some time at the psychiatric unit of St. Mary's Hospital in Passaic after confronting some of his victims on the Paterson street where he lived, and later was charged with aggravated assault against three people at a Secaucus Hotel.
The memorial was the idea of some of Hanley's victims after the suicide of Morristown resident Jim Kelly in 2003, who had been a St. Joseph's parishioner. Kelly's brother Patrick, a Mendham Township resident, said the memorial was important for the victims because it acknowledged their suffering.
According to 6abc.com, Ellis has been charged with defacement of private property, desecration of a venerated object and criminal mischief. Police did not have a motive for the crime.
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