New York priest arrested in rape of Massachusetts boy two decades ago

BOSTON (AP) _ A Roman Catholic priest charged with raping a young boy in Massachusetts more than two decades ago was arrested in New York, prosecutors said. <br><br>The Rev. Romano Ferraro, 67, of the

Tuesday, April 2nd 2002, 12:00 am

By: News On 6


BOSTON (AP) _ A Roman Catholic priest charged with raping a young boy in Massachusetts more than two decades ago was arrested in New York, prosecutors said.

The Rev. Romano Ferraro, 67, of the Jamaica section of New York, was charged Monday with raping and sexually assaulting a boy at a Billerica residence between 1973 and 1980, when the victim was between 7 and 13 years old.

A telephone message left at the public information office of the Diocese of Brooklyn, which serves 1.6 million Catholics in Brooklyn and Queens, was not immediately returned Monday.

Ferraro was never assigned to any parish in Massachusetts, said Middlesex County district attorney spokesman Seth Horwitz.

Ferraro is set to be arraigned in Middlesex Superior Court after he is extradited from New York. He is charged with rape of a child and three counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14.

The statute of limitations for the alleged abuse would be 10 years from the time of the alleged assault or 10 years since the alleged victim turned 16, both of which would have expired in this case. But prosecutors said the clock on that statute was stopped because Ferraro lived outside Massachusetts.

The complaints were initiated last fall before a sexual abuse scandal began roiling the Archdiocese of Boston, following revelations church officials moved a priest from parish to parish following allegations of sexual abuse.

Following those revelations the archdiocese turned over to prosecutors the names of more than 80 priests accused of sexual abuse over four decades.

In other developments relating to the church scandal, a seminary priest in Florida resigned over allegations that he sexually abused a teen-ager in New York in the 1970s.

Monsignor William White, 69, resigned after the president of St. Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary in Boynton Beach discovered the Archdiocese of New York had settled a case in 1997 for $100,000 involving alleged abuse by White.

White did not admit to the abuse, but said his actions were misinterpreted, seminary president Stephen Bosso said Monday.

Kevin Mahony, 42, of Salem, Ore., said White abused him for three years, beginning when he was a senior at Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains, N.Y. Mahony said White became a friend of his family and inappropriately touched him as a teen about 20 times during overnight stays.

And in New Jersey, a family is trying to convince a court that it should be able to sue the Catholic Diocese of Camden over alleged sexual abuse that occurred almost 20 years ago.

Under New Jersey law, civil claims in child sex-abuse cases generally must be filed by the time the victim reaches age 20, but the law allows exceptions when the victim can show that duress or mental instability delayed the filing of a claim.

Family members were in Atlantic County Superior Court on Monday for the first in a series of hearing on the suit.

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