Former Newark Archbishop Accused Of Abusing 5-Year-Old In Church Rectory ibtimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from ibtimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
NorthJersey.com
She believed that a high-ranking prelate in the Catholic Church who brought food to her impoverished family in Newark often praising her for being “such a smart and pretty young girl” had been sent by God.
But then Archbishop Peter Leo Gerety, the leader of the Newark Archdiocese in the 1970s and 1980s, allegedly took the girl, who was 5 years old at the time, to his bedroom in the rectory of the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart and instructed her to lie on his bed.
Now a 49-year-old woman, she said in a recently filed lawsuit that Gerety sexually abused her several times in 1976 the first accusation of sexual abuse to be made public against the late archbishop, who was considered a pivotal figure in the 1970s for his role in implementing reforms of the Vatican II Conference that modernized the church.