NEW JERSEY
Star-Ledger
By Star-Ledger Staff and Wire Reports
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on June 18, 2014
BOONVILLE, Mo. — 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.
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