NEWARK (NJ)
BishopAccountability.org
Summary of Case: Kenneth L. Martin was ordained for the Archdiocese of Newark in 1977. He was an assistant priest at St. Andrew’s parish in Bayonne until 1991, when he was made a personal secretary for Archbishop McCarrick while residing at Sacred Heart Cathedral. In 1993 Martin was assigned as Administrator of Holy Name of Jesus in East Orange.
In the mid-1990s a man met with McCarrick to report that Martin had sexually abused him over a four-year period, beginning when he was age 13 in the mid-1970s. He said that Martin also abused his younger brother. The man, Mark Crawford, said that he had gone in 1983 to auxilliary bishop Pechillo with the same information, but that Pechillo took no action. McCarrick removed Martin from ministry briefly, then reassigned him to a hospital chaplaincy. Crawford was alarmed several years later when he saw a photograph in the diocesan newspaper of Martin and McCarrick at a hospital Christmas party for children.
Martin remained in active ministry until 2002. In 2013 he was reportedly still a priest, working as a train conductor in New Jersey.
Ordained: 1977
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