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Catholic Priest Sentenced to Four Years in Prison for Sexually Assaulting Teenager in 1990s

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First guilty plea secured by Attorney General’s Clergy Abuse Task Force

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Phillipsburg NJ, Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal and Middlesex County Prosecutor Andrew C. Carey announced that a Roman Catholic priest was sentenced to prison today for sexually assaulting a teenage girl in the early 1990s.  He is the first defendant to be charged and convicted by the Clergy Abuse Task Force formed by Attorney General Grewal in September 2018. 

Father Thomas P. Ganley, 64, of Phillipsburg, N.J., was sentenced to four years in state prison by Superior Court Judge Diane Pincus in Middlesex County.  He pleaded guilty on April 8 to second-degree sexual assault.  In pleading guilty, he admitted that he engaged in sexual acts with the victim when she was 16 or 17 years old, at a time when he had supervisory authority over her.  Ganley was a priest at Saint Cecelia Church in the Iselin section of Woodbridge when the criminal acts occurred and had supervisory authority over the victim as head of the Youth Ministry for the parish.

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