Ex-jersey City Priest Sentenced to Prison for Molesting 3 Boys

The Star-Ledger
June 18, 2014

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2014/06/priest_convicted_of_sexually_abusing_boy_in_nj_30_years_ago_sentenced_to_prison_for_molesting_3_othe.html

Gerald Howard is seen in three photos, as Rev. Carmine Sita, left, in 1976, as an inmate in Essex County in 2010, center, and as an inmate in Missouri in 2012.

A former Catholic priest has been sentenced to two concurrent 12-year sentences after admitting that he molested three teenage boys in the 1980s.

Gerald J. Howard, who also was known as Carmine Sita, admitted Tuesday that he forced two 14-year-olds and a 15-year-old boy into sex acts between May 1984 and September 1987 in Boonville. He also admitted that he gave his victims drugs and alcohol.

The Columbia Daily Tribune reports Howard was a priest at Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Boonville.

More than 30 years ago, Sita was convicted of sexually assaulting a 17-year-old boy and also convicted of drug dealing while serving at St. Aloysius in Jersey City. He served there from 1976 to 1982.

In January 1983, he was sentenced in Hudson County to five years probation and ordered to undergo treatment. By August 1983, he joined SS Peter and Paul Church in Boonville after a short stay at a treatment center in New Mexico.

In 2009, the Newark Archdiocese paid $225,00 of a $600,000 settlement to a man who said he was abused by Howard in Missouri. At the time, victim Mark McCalister criticized the Newark and Jefferson City dioceses for not alerting parishioners, either in the 1980s or subsequently, about Howard's criminal background.