Rick Rojas and Liam Stack

<h1>Allegations of sexual abuse trailed John Capparelli, a former priest, for decades, resurfacing in the years after the Archdiocese of Newark removed him from ministry. There were the lawsuits from accusers, and last month his name was included on a list published by the Roman Catholic Church in New Jersey that identified priests who had been credibly accused of sexual abuse.</h1>

On Saturday, Capparelli was found fatally shot in his home in Nevada, and the authorities there said that his death was being investigated as a homicide.

The police said that officers found Capparelli’s body in his kitchen after being sent to do a wellness check at his home in Henderson, Nevada, a city of 300,000 people just outside Las Vegas, where he has lived for the past few years.

A representative for the Clark County coroner’s office said Tuesday that Capparelli, 70, had a single gunshot wound to the neck and that the medical examiner had ruled his death a homicide.

In a statement, the Henderson Police Department said that investigators have not identified a suspect but were “following up on developed leads” and cited “suspicious circumstances” surrounding his death. Police officials declined to elaborate beyond the statement, and said that the investigation was continuing.

Capparelli had been included with nearly 200 other priests and deacons who were named last month by the Catholic dioceses in New Jersey as having been credibly accused of the sexual abuse of a minor. The disclosures joined a flood of lists released in recent months by Catholic dioceses and religious orders across the country in response to the sex abuse scandal that has engulfed the Church.

The Newark archdiocese said that Capparelli, who was ordained in 1980, served in several parishes and schools before he was removed from ministry and later defrocked. In a statement Tuesday, the archdiocese said that it had “no information concerning Mr. Capparelli’s death or any investigation related to his death.”

Capparelli had worked at Our Lady of Fatima in North Bergen; Oratory Prep in Summit; Holy Trinity in Westfield; St. Theresa in Kenilworth; and Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, according to the list from the archdiocese.

The reported allegations against Capparelli took place while he was still in the priesthood, but they continued to emerge in the years after he left the ministry in 1992. The Star-Ledger, the newspaper in Newark, covered him extensively, reporting in 2011 that he had been hired as a math teacher at a public high school in Newark. He later quit teaching and moved to Nevada. For several years, Capparelli operated a porn website featuring young men wrestling, The Star-Ledger reported.

Capparelli had been accused in lawsuits of groping teenage boys, asking them to wrestle and photographing them in compromising positions while wearing swimsuits. He had never faced criminal charges related to the allegations, nor had he ever publicly acknowledged any wrongdoing.

One of his accusers, Rich Fitter, said he had been raped by Capparelli as a teenager after meeting him through a Catholic after-school program in Union County, where the priest ran a wrestling club. Fitter said Capparelli recruited young men “with a certain look” — clean cut and athletic — for the club, befriending them and taking them to the movies or out for pizza. He made the boys wrestle in Speedo swimsuits, saying that they risked getting caught on loose fabric and injuring themselves, Fitter said.

“He’d be hovering over you, snapping all these pictures,” Fitter, now 52, said, “and then he’d say ‘Let me help you with some of the moves,’ and then he would actually get out on the mat with you.”

Over time, Fitter said, the priest “got more possessive and things got weirder.” He started to pull away from Capparelli, and that is when the priest raped him, Fitter said.

“The world is a better place and a safer place now,” Fitter said.

He added, “Part of me is angry that I am never going to get an apology or an admission from him, that what he did was wrong. But nobody else is going to be hurt by him and that is a good thing.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="36200c95-88e2-4afc-9d5b-ee84f8a9605b" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/nyregion/john-capparelli-priest-killed.html">The New York Times</a>.

New Jersey priest accused of sexual abuse found shot to death [nj]

On Saturday, Capparelli was found fatally shot in his home in Nevada, and the authorities there said that his death was being investigated as a homicide.

New Jersey priest accused of sexual abuse found shot to death

The diocese is also one of the largest in the nation, its domain encompassing Brooklyn and Queens in New York City, an area with 1.5 million people who the church says identify as Catholic.

The disclosure covers decades of allegations involving priests who had served in the diocese’s many neighborhood parishes, as well as its schools. Advocates who track abuse cases said it also roughly doubled the number of suspected abusers they had been aware of in the diocese.

The list contributes to a growing sense of the vastness of a sex abuse epidemic that has plunged the Catholic Church into scandal and inflamed a crisis in confidence among its followers. Church officials have employed the disclosures as a way to acknowledge failures and mend ties with Catholics whose relationship with the church has been tested over its handling of sex abuse.

“We know this list will generate many emotions for victims who have suffered terribly,” the Most Rev. Nicholas DiMarzio, the bishop of Brooklyn, said in a statement accompanying the disclosure. “For their suffering, I am truly sorry. I have met with many victims who have told me that more than anything, they want an acknowledgment of what was done to them. This list gives that recognition and I hope it will add another layer of healing for them on their journey toward wholeness.”

DiMarzio followed dozens of other bishops in the United States in publishing the names of suspected abusers.

Church officials said the disclosure reflected the expanse of the diocese, both in demographic size and in history. The diocese said that the list covers its 166-year existence, and that the suspected priests made up not even 5 percent of the clergy who served during that time. Forty-one of the named clergy members died or resigned before the accusations were found credible, the diocese said, and nearly two-thirds of the priests named have died. Two of the 108 clergy members named were deacons. (The earliest clergy member included on the list was Monsignor John Cross, who was ordained in 1916.)

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/15/nyregion/brooklyn-priests-sex-abuse.html" id="00487b65-f77d-3674-ab64-fb8158a6d0c9">The New York Times</a>.

NEW YORK — The Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn on Friday named more than 100 priests who have been credibly accused of sexually abusing a child. It was one of the largest disclosures yet in a torrent of lists recently published by the church as its handling of the problem has drawn the scrutiny of law enforcement officials.

More Than 100 Priests Accused of Sex Abuse Are Named by Brooklyn Catholic Diocese

The disclosure covers decades of allegations involving priests who had served in the diocese’s many neighborhood parishes, as well as its schools, including Cathedral Preparatory, Christ the King, St. Francis Preparatory and Archbishop Molloy high schools. Advocates who track abuse cases said it also roughly doubled the number of suspected abusers they had been aware of in the diocese.

DiMarzio followed dozens of other bishops in the United States in publishing the names of suspected abusers after an explosive grand jury report in Pennsylvania last summer that worsened tensions in the church by documenting seven decades of accusations.

On Wednesday, the bishops of the five Catholic dioceses in New Jersey released the names of nearly 200 priests who had been credibly accused.

And last month, the Jesuit province covering the northeastern United States identified 50 accused priests, including many who had served in the order’s schools in New York City.

The bishops in Hartford, Connecticut; Kansas City, Missouri; and most of the 15 dioceses in Texas were among the others who named accused priests in the past month.

But the Brooklyn diocese’s disclosure has surprised advocates by the sheer number included, as it stands as one of the largest yet from an individual diocese. The archdioceses in Los Angeles and Boston are among the few others that have identified more accused priests.

More than anything, church officials in Brooklyn said the disclosure reflected the expanse of the diocese, both in demographic size and in history. The diocese said the list covers its 166-year existence, and that the suspected priests made up not even 5 percent of the clergy who served during that time.

“It is probably not everyone, I hate to say it, but it sounds like a robust list compared to some others,” said Terry McKiernan, the president of BishopAccountability.org, which tracks cases of alleged clerical abuse. “Brooklyn is a really large diocese. It’s larger than some archdioceses.”

Catholic officials have portrayed the disclosures as a move toward accountability, as the church expresses contrition over its shortcomings and shines a light on cases that had long been shrouded in darkness.

Many victims have welcomed the lists, accepting them as long-awaited affirmation. But advocates have also raised concerns about the limitations of the church’s willingness to be transparent.

“Seeing that they are not alone helps victims heal and could also compel others who were abused — whether by the same person or in the same place — to come forward,” said Zach Hiner, executive director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP. “What is not helpful, though, is the careful curation of these lists.”

Forty-one of the named clergy members died or resigned before the accusations were found credible, the diocese said, and nearly two-thirds of the priests named have died. Two of the 108 clergy members named were deacons. (The earliest clergy member included on the list was Monsignor John Cross, who was ordained in 1916.)

With the disclosure, the diocese included a graph showing that cases of suspected abuse peaked in the 1960s and 1970s; many of the allegations were reported after 2002. Since then, when the diocese instituted what it described as a zero-tolerance policy permanently removing credibly accused priests from ministry, it found two credible cases.

In 2017, the Diocese of Brooklyn named eight former priests who were defrocked for child sexual abuse offenses. Those priests were also included in the most recent disclosure.

Beyond those priests, advocates said that they had been aware of dozens of others who were believed to be abusers.

Advocates said the Brooklyn list was an important development in illustrating the extent of the abuse in the diocese. But they also noted that the diocese, like the others, operated at its own discretion in choosing which names and what information to include. “It is good that Brooklyn included previously unknown abusers by putting them on this list,” McKiernan said. “But it also leaves a lot to be desired.”

The list did not provide the start and end dates of a priest’s time at a parish, and it also included no information about the nature of the accusations, making it unclear if each man faced allegations from one accuser or several.

“There were some names I did not think they would ever release that they did on this list, so it is better than I expected,” said Sister Sally Butler, a Dominican nun in Brooklyn and a member of Catholic Whistleblowers, a group of current and former clergy members who are activists against clerical abuse. “There are some missing names on this list that have me wondering. I think some people are still being protected.”

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Rick Rojas and Liam Stack

Articles written by the author

New Jersey priest accused of sexual abuse found shot to death

More Than 100 Priests Accused of Sex Abuse Are Named by Brooklyn Catholic Diocese

More Than 100 Priests Accused of Sex Abuse Are Named by Brooklyn Catholic Diocese