NEW JERSEY
The Record
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2013
BY ABBOTT KOLOFF AND KIBRET MARKOS
STAFF WRITERS
THE RECORD
A former Wykoff associate pastor who was allowed to continue working as a priest despite confessing to groping a 13-year-old boy has agreed to be defrocked after admitting he violated a legal agreement that barred him from working with children, authorities said Friday.
Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said in a statement Friday that Rev. Michael Fugee has agreed to be laicized and never work again as a priest. The agreement announced on Friday was unusual because of its requirement for Fugee to undergo a formal process of being defrocked.
Had Fugee been found guilty of violating the agreement with law enforcement, a fourth-degree crime, the judicial system would not have had the authority to require him to be laicized, Molinelli said.
Molinelli also delivered a scathing assessment of the way the Newark Archdiocese monitored Fugee, who attended youth retreats and heard the confessions of children at churches in Rochelle Park and Paramus after he and church officials signed an agreement with law enforcement in 2007.
“It has not appeared that the Archdiocese made any significant effort to adhere” to the memorandum of understanding with law enforcement, Molinelli said.
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