LONG ISLAND (NY)
Newsday
January 3, 2003
Jimmy Breslin
We are in receipt today of a portion of a transcript of a four-hour sworn statement of the Rev. Michael Hands, a priest who has pleaded guilty to molesting a 13-year-old boy. The statement is for a civil suit by the mother. Hands also charges that Msgr. Charles “Bud” Ribaudo, formerly of St. Dominic’s in Oyster Bay, sexually abused him back when he was in high school, which Ribaudo denies.
The Rev. Hands is hardly heroic. The parents of the victim report that they walked into the boy’s bedroom just in time to find him standing on a chair with a rope around his neck. They blame it on the molestation.
Yet the statement by Hands takes the matter out of Long Island and puts it alongside Boston as a national story. It shows that the inside of the Catholic Church coincides with that heard on a bug in any Mafia clubhouse.
The Rev. Hands is hardly heroic. The parents of the victim report that they walked into the boy’s bedroom just in time to find him standing on a chair with a rope around his neck. They blame it on the molestation.
Yet the statement by Hands takes the matter out of Long Island and puts it alongside Boston as a national story. It shows that the inside of the Catholic Church coincides with that heard on a bug in any Mafia clubhouse.
