THE LEGACY OF BISHOP’S LETTER (Praise for priest in abuse case)

A complaint was made in 1999 to the Diocese of Rockville Centre by a former altar boy who said he had been sexually abused by a priest named Andrew Millar about eight years earlier, the boy was 10 years old. The diocese sent Millar for counseling to a treatment center in Maryland. He was allowed to retire when he returned in the fall of that year by he continued to conduct masses at St. Peter and Paul R.C. Church in Manorville. No one in the parish knew about the complaint, the treatment, or three other complaints brought against him since 1995. Writing in response to Millar's retirement, then-Bishop John McGann thanked Millar for his 41 years of priestly goodness and said he was pleased Millar had agreed to reside in a parish in Manorville where he could assist a pastor who was going on sabbatical.  Eight months after being sent to Manorville, he was arrested for sodomizing a learning disabled teenage boy in a Tobay Beach bathroom. He is serving a 1 to 3 year sentence at the Arthur Kill Correctional Facility in Staten Island.  

(New York)