NEW JERSEY
The Record
TUESDAY JUNE 25, 2013
BY JEFF GREEN
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD
In his first interview about a scandal involving a Catholic priest arrested last month for allegedly violating an agreement with prosecutors, Newark Archbishop John J. Myers defended his actions and provided new details about church’s decision making during the crisis.
Myers, in an interview published online Tuesday by the National Catholic Register, explained a confidential review board ruling in the decade-old sex-abuse case against the Rev. Michael Fugee and addressed new charges that Fugee violated an agreement with prosecutors by working with children throughout New Jersey.
Fugee was convicted of groping a 13-year-old boy in 2003 when he was an assistant pastor at the Church of St. Elizabeth of Hungary in Wyckoff. The conviction was overturned in 2006 due to a judicial error, but to avoid a retrial, he entered into a special rehabilitation program for first-time offenders.
Fugee also signed an agreement with the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office and the archdiocese that strictly prohibits ministering to children for as long as he remains a priest. Last month he was charged with seven counts of violating the agreement for allegedly hearing confessions of children.
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