NEW JERSEY
The Record
TUESDAY, JULY 23, 2013
BY JEFF GREEN
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD
Parishioners of an Oradell church were never told that a suspected child sex offender was allowed to live in the rectory, yet a Newark Archdiocese spokesman said the public was never at risk.
But public outcry about this incident, and two others involving a disgraced Wyckoff cleric, have underscored potential conflicts between church operations and the public’s right to know when troubled priests are in their midst.
The archdiocese’s mind-set, a Catholic church expert says, “flies in the face” of developments in criminal law — where sex offenders are required to register with authorities and to live certain distances from schools and child-care centers.
The Rev. Robert Chabak was stripped of priestly duties after church officials, investigating a complaint, found “sufficient evidence” that he abused a teenage boy in the 1970s. While he “vehemently denied” the accusations, he chose to resign in 2004 when the archdiocese planned to take action under church law, said Jim Goodness, a spokesman for the archdiocese. The statute of limitations had expired and Chabak was not criminally charged.
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