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	Court Reverses Sex-Contact Verdict against Priest By Jeff Diamant The Star-Ledger April 18, 2006 http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf? /base/news-3/1145335598280300.xml&coll=1 A state appeals court yesterday overturned the 2003 conviction of a Catholic priest from Bergen County who was found guilty of ag gravated criminal sexual contact on a teenage boy. In ordering a new trial for the Rev. Michael Fugee, the court ruled his case suffered because the trial judge improperly charged the jury and wrongly let the panel hear a statement Fugee gave to police when he was arrested in March 2001. Fugee, 45, was an associate pastor at St. Elizabeth Church in Wyckoff, and has not served as a priest since his arrest. He still receives support payments from the Newark Archdiocese, said James Goodness, an archdiocesan spokesman. When he was sentenced in 2003, Fugee was ordered to lifelong community supervision and five years' probation. He also must register as a sex offender wherever he lives. Fugee could not be reached for comment yesterday, but his attor ney, Brian Neary, said Fugee maintains his innocence. "I guess he'll be a happy man today. That was a hard-fought trial," said Neary, who would not reveal Fugee's whereabouts. The Bergen County Prosecutor's Office has 30 days to decide whether to retry the case. Fugee, who was ordained in 1994, was accused of groping a teenage boy during wrestling horseplay several times in 1999 and 2000. While at St. Elizabeth, he had become close to the boy and his mother during the mother's separation, which eventually led to di vorce. The boy, who testified at the trial, said Fugee molested him four times in the presence of family members or friends in his living room in Wyckoff and once in a hotel where he, his mother and Fugee were staying on a vacation. Fugee was convicted of aggra vated criminal sexual contact, but acquitted of child endangerment. The appellate panel said Superior Court Judge Charles J. Walsh erred in not issuing specific instructions to the jury on the issue of whether Fugee had been in charge of supervising the boy during the incident. Such supervision is one component of the charge of aggra vated criminal sexual contact. The court also said Walsh, who died in July, should not have let the jury hear part of Fugee's police statement in which the priest said he was uncertain of his sexual iden tity. "The admission of this statement injected into this case the specter of a jury deciding defendant's guilt on the unfounded association between homosexuality and pedophilia," the court wrote. Fugee later disavowed the statement, saying he had felt intimidated by the three investigators questioning him and gave the statement so he could go home. Jeff Diamant covers religion. He may be reached at jdiamant@star ledger.com or (973) 392-1547.
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