Posted on 06/26/2002 8:23:23 PM PDT by Aliska
Missionary Priest Is Charged With Sex Abuse of Queens Boy By THOMAS J. LUECK
A priest visiting a Roman Catholic parish in Queens was arrested last night and charged with the sexual abuse of a 12-year-boy during a Father's Day excursion to Rockaway Beach.
The authorities said the priest, the Rev. Peter Kiare, 41, a native of Kenya who is a member of a missionary order in Ireland, would be arraigned today in Queens County Criminal Court on charges of sex abuse, forcible touching and endangering the welfare of a child.
He was arrested at 5:30 p.m. yesterday by detectives with the Queens Special Victims Bureau at a residence for priests in Long Island City, Queens, and remained in jail last night pending his arraignment, according to Patrick Clark, a spokesman for the Queens County district attorney, Richard A. Brown.
An investigator said the 12-year-old described an ordeal of being touched against his will repeatedly over the course of a beach trip to the southern end of Queens.
Father Kiare is the third priest arrested in just over a month on charges of sex abuse committed in the Diocese of Brooklyn, which includes Queens. On May 23, a priest from India was arrested in Harlem and charged with molesting a 12-year-old girl three years ago at her home in Brooklyn. And on Friday, a visiting priest from Nigeria was arrested in Texas and charged with raping a woman two years ago in a Brooklyn rectory.
That priest, the Rev. Cyriacus Udegbulem, 38, was dismissed by the Diocese of Laredo, Tex., in 2001 because of complaints that he had groped women there, a law enforcement official in New York said yesterday. Father Udegbulem pleaded not guilty to the New York charges on Monday at his arraignment before Justice Neil J. Firetog of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn. The judge set bail at $50,000. Father Udegbulem remains imprisoned at Rikers Island, pending his next court date in September.
His lawyer, George Lewis, said his client maintained that the sexual contact in Brooklyn was consensual.
The authorities said last night that Father Kiare had arrived in New York on June 11 and was delivering sermons at St. Mary's Church in Woodside, Queens. A member of Holy Ghost Fathers, a missionary order at work in poor nations of Africa and elsewhere, he was asking for donations from the parishioners, according to a church official.
Investigators said he befriended the 12-year-old boy and won the trust of the boy's family, who are members of the St. Mary's congregation. With the family's consent, they said, he took the boy on an outing on June 16; they traveled by public bus to Rockaway Beach.
"The abuse occurred on the bus, on the beach and on the bus ride back," said an official close to the investigation who insisted that his name not be used. He said the boy told detectives that he resisted the priest's advances, which involved groping and touching, and told his mother of the abuse when he returned home.
The boy's mother then contacted St. Mary's, and officials there contacted the Queens district attorney, the authorities said. They declined to identify the boy or his family.
Frank DeRosa, a spokesman for the Diocese of Brooklyn, said last night that St. Mary's it was "very likely" that officials at St. Mary's had consulted diocesan officials about the incident before contacting the district.
attorney.
But he said Father Kiare, unlike the two other visiting priests charged recently with sexual offenses, had not been authorized by the diocese to work in any parish of Brooklyn or Queens. "He had no permission to function here," Mr. DeRosa said. Although it is not uncommon for visiting priests to spend time at parishes raising money for missionary work without the official sanction of the local diocese, he said that Father Kiare's status as a missionary doing fund-raising placed him outside direct oversight of the diocese.
For years, he said, the diocese has had a policy requiring priests from abroad who are authorized to work in parishes to provide an affidavit, signed by the priests' own bishops, that they have no history of "anything that would disqualify them from working in a parish."
Such affidavits were provided by the two other priests who now face sexual abuse charges, he said.
Father Kiare "is not a priest of the Brooklyn Diocese or associated with that parish," he said.
I took it as referring to the case of the woman and the U-last-name priest. The article kind of jumps around. I hope the quote wasn't referring to the boy!
Thanks for pinging the others. I thought they had a "need to know".
Name a society that hasn't had deviants. The only difference now is we know about them.
I will mention it again but I don't have good documentation. I think I read it on unity publishing website, but there was a priest in California who went to the authorities and really pissed off the powers that be by so doing. He took a lot of flak. If true, that priest practiced heroic virtue in my book.
I'm disappointed that so many priests "in the know" haven't, for whatever reasons, thrown protocol to the winds and been more outspoken about the problem before now. I would have expected a few to have come forward and blown the whistle before the media jumped on the bandwagon.
It must have been a taboo subject in literary circles. I've been running through my mind all the things I've read and movies I've seen. Don't recall anything like what we have seen. One Russian movie had a scene about it. The kid rebuffed the agressor and got away from him safely.
What a lame statement.
Deviants were, by definition, never accepted. Now, they are.
"thus a healthy society rejects them and protects their children. We are, I fear, no longer a healthy society."
I believe I said that.
When I was a young boy, I had thought of going into the priesthood. My parents thought it was wonderful. I traveled with a very trusted priest, Father Murphy, who later died of cancer at a young age. He was a good man, and did nothing wrong himself or out of the ordinary.
We went to a seminary in Upstate New York, near Ogdensburg, for the weekend.
I don't want to get into the details here, but what I witnessed and experienced there in one weekend shocked me beyond anything I could have imagined. Again, not by Father Murphy, but by some of the staff and students there.
It forever put to rest my thoughts about entering the priesthood.
You know what's really sad? In the old days, there is no one you would have trusted more. A priest, one assumed, would be the man most pushed internally to live a completely moral Christian life - someone who would move all things in his path to protect your child, both physically and spiritually. Today, you're right. You'd have to be crazy to allow your kid to be alone with a priest. The priesthood has been IMMENSELY devalued - and probably for the rest of my life. It will take years and decades before priests even have the opportunity of redeeming people's trust. But that's only if they truly address the underlying problems in the Church. It's not even apparent that they intend to do so. Priests today are seen, on average, at a much lower place morally than they were meant to be. It's really up to them to try, over time, to reclaim their moral standing and trust. They have an uphill battle. Nobody should be more intolerant of what's described in this article than they.
This is just another example of the media making an issue out of nothing, right? /sarcasm
We had a series of homosexual molestations of teenage boys by a priest in a neighboring town (including, horrificly, anal rape). Ten years ago, when a new priest (the present pastor) was sent to the parish, he discovered what was going on. He went to the authorities, both within and without the Church. (Of course, within the Church, he was ignored and told to keep things quiet.) But then he went public, and in the face of strict hierarchical orders not to do so, he asked the congregation for any information on other kids who might have been raped or abused. Information on other kids was brought forward, and this new priest spent years trying to help them. He has never been promoted, and is held in disdain to this day by the bishop of our diocese. Yet he was one of the (few) heros in all of this. I wish he could be our bishop.
You said it. Unbelievable.
Sink, in honesty I must say that most of the Catholics on this board seem to center their conversations on this subject around the greatness of and the survival of the Catholic Church.
In my opinion, the kids eventually are forgotten as the debate goes on about observing proper Catholic rules about how to handle it.
And... you are correct. Many, if not most societies have deviants. They are all over the Church, and are not ONLY residing in the Catholic portion. This is all of our problem, because the children are OUR ministry.
I agree with you to some extent. I am a children's pastor. I work primarily with kids from 7-12.
On occasion, I work exclusively with the 10-12 year olds.
As most know, church attendance is .... um... suspect during the Summer months.
I have rules about student-to-teacher ratios.
A little wisdom and common sense goes a long way.
One thing about kids this age-they go out of their way seeking acceptance and approval. This is why so many of them are abused.
I hate Satan!
Yet more good insight! You have a fortunate congregation. V's wife.
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