Community Corner
Fugee Controversy Embroils Nutley Church, Archdiocese of Newark
Three have already resigned amidst accusations that former Wyckoff pastor Michael Fugee violated an agreement with Bergen County prosecutors to discontinue his work with children, following allegations of sexual abuse.
The controversy surrounding the work of former Wyckoff pastor Michael Fugee flared up Sunday at a protest outside the Holy Family Church in Nutley, NorthJersey.com reported.
Protesters demanded the resignation of church Monsignor Paul Bochicchio, citing Fugee’s involvement with the parish’s youth ministry and presence on overnight trips to Canada between 2007 and 2011.
Fugee confessed in 2001 to inappropriately touching the genitals of a Wyckoff teenager twice, once during a visit to the teen’s home and again during an overnight church retreat to Virginia. He later recanted the confession, and a 2003 conviction on charges of criminal sexual conduct was overturned in 2007 due to a judicial error.
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Prosecutors opted not to retry Fugee, instead reaching an agreement that he could return to the priesthood under the condition that he no longer work with children, an agreement that the Archdiocese of Newark signed.
“Bochicchio should never have had him here around children at all,” Robert M. Hoatson, a former priest and advocate for survivors of sexual abuse, told the Record. “The fact that Bochicchio accompanied a youth group to Canada with Fugee is unconscionable.”
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Holy Family maintains that during the overnight trips with the youth group, Fugee was supervised by at least one other adult in all his interactions with children, and youth ministers at the church said they were unaware of the 2007 agreement the accused pastor reached with prosecutors.
A spokesman for Newark Archbishop John J. Meyers said that, had they been asked, the archdiocese would not have given permission to Fugee to attend the youth retreats.
Prominent lawmakers such as Senate President Stephen Sweeney and gubernatorial candidate Barbara Buono have called for Meyers’ resignation. A pastor and two youth ministers at St. Mary’s Parish in Colts Neck resigned last week following reports that Fugee had participated in the church’s youth retreats.
The Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office is investigating whether the 2007 agreement was violated by Fugee or the archdiocese.
