Janitor Claims Priest Sexually Groped Him, by Peggy Wright, Daily Record, November 29, 2011

Janitor Claims Priest Sexually Groped Him

By Peggy Wright
Daily Record
November 29, 2011

http://www.mycentraljersey.com/article/20111128/NJNEWS10/311280021/Janitor-claims-priest-sexually-groped-him

Jose Feliciano on the stand today. / KAREN FUCITO/SPECIAL TO THE DAILY RECORD

Jose Feliciano (left) goes over documents with defense attorney Balin Baidwan. / Karen Mancinelli/FOR NJ PRESS MEDIA

Ex-church janitor Jose R. Feliciano testified Monday that he endured years of sexual fondling by the Rev. Edward Hinds of Chatham and "went crazy" in 2009 and stabbed the priest after he told him he was being fired.

Maintaining a downcast appearance and speaking in a soft, halting voice at his murder trial in Morristown, Feliciano, now 66, said he told Hinds, the pastor of St. Patrick Roman Catholic Church, in late 2003 that he had committed a crime in Philadelphia in the 1980s and could not withstand a fingerprint check necessary to keep his parish custodial job.

Feliciano claimed that Hinds deliberately did not forward his fingerprints to proper authorities and hung this favor over his head in exchange for chances to sexually molest him in the rectory, parish office and the school library. Under questioning by defense lawyer Balin Baidwan, Feliciano said "Who would believe me?" if he filed a complaint against the priest and he claimed that he told the priest he wanted to retire in March 2010 when he turned 65. He said the priest urged him to stay on the job longer.

Feliciano is on trial on charges of fatally stabbing the 61-year-old cleric 44 times in the rectory kitchen on Oct. 22, 2009. He has admitted the stabbing, but said Monday he did not mean to kill Hinds but went "crazy." Defense lawyers are pursuing a passion and provocation manslaughter verdict.

Feliciano said he was nearly finished with work on Oct. 22, 2009, when he encountered Hinds, who said he had to speak to him as soon as possible. When he went to the rectory, he said, Hinds told him he had to let him go as of Oct. 23, 2009, the next day.

"I felt very low. 'What are you saying, you have to let me go?' " he said he asked the priest. "He said there's a lot of things going on in the office. I cannot afford to have you around."

Feliciano continued: "All this time, things he's been doing to me. All this time, he's been using me. Now he's going to let me go."

Feliciano said he got into a heated argument with the priest, pleaded, cried and said he would not be let go. He said Hinds "started calling me a child." He said he spotted a knife on a table and that Hinds grabbed his wrist but he wrenched free and left the rectory. He said he walked the grounds a bit and returned to the rectory because the priest told him he wanted to finish their conversation.

Upon his return, he said, the priest took the knife and Feliciano grabbed it from him and sliced his hand. He said the priest told him he was not going to hurt anyone.

"I just lost it. I got so angry with him," Feliciano said. "I just went crazy." He said he remembers rolling around the kitchen floor with the priest but realized he killed him after he noticed Hinds trying to make a cellphone call and he banged the phone away from him. He said he went into the rectory bathroom, vomited and tried to clean up pools of blood with rags.

"I was just crying. I cleaned the blood. I went into the bathroom and threw up … knowing I killed a man, that I killed a man," he said.

In the years leading up to his homicide, Hinds, like pastors around the country, was under a Catholic Church mandate to make sure that all employees and volunteers with access to children had gone through special training called "Protecting God's Children" and were fingerprinted. Feliciano said that in late 2003 he told the priest and another church worker, Maris Barrett, that he could not be fingerprinted.

Barrett previously testified and never mentioned any special meeting with Hinds and Feliciano in which the janitor expressed fears about being fingerprinted.

Feliciano said he was fingerprinted anyway at Chatham police headquarters in 2003 and gave his fingerprint card to Barrett, who he expected would forward the card to Hinds. Feliciano said the priest later persuaded him to reveal his criminal past in the confessional. Jurors have not specifically been told that Feliciano was accused of sexually abusing a 7-year-old girl in Philadelphia in 1988 and skipped out on the charge.

After the disclosure, he said, Hinds asked him to move out of a church-owned home next to St. Patrick's. Then months later, after Feliciano had relocated to Easton, Pa., the priest invited him into the rectory to talk about his commute and new home, Feliciano said.

"He put his hand on my lap. I did not say anything to him when he put his hand on my lap. He continued to rub my leg. I looked at him kind of strange. From that position he went and grabbed my privacy. When he grabbed my privacy, I push him to the side and said 'Father, what are you doing?' " Feliciano testified.

"His response was not to worry about it. It was not for me to worry about. He had my fingerprints card. I said it was not right anyway for him to touch me," Feliciano said.

He recounted for the jury several occasions in which he alleged the priest fondled him and warned him that he still had his fingerprint card. The card, upon being checked by State Police, would have shown that Feliciano was a fugitive from a criminal charge in Philadelphia.

He said he never wanted the intimate contact with Hinds, but that the cleric would always remind him of his past.

After one encounter in 2007, he said, he told the priest: "Let me be. I'm not enjoying what you're doing. He brought out the point about my situation."

Direct questioning of Feliciano is scheduled to continue Tuesday, followed by cross-examination by prosecutors.

Contact: pwright@njpressmedia.com