Convicted pedophile priest was teaching English to children in Punta Cana

After the story broke on NBC News on Friday, 22 March 2019, 47-year old former priest Hadmel Frías Gatón (Hadmels DeFrias) found himself without a job by the following Monday. He had been teaching English at a private school, Colegio del Caribe, in Pueblo Bávaro, a residential area in Punta Cana since February 2018. Frías is a Dominican by birth who migrated to New Jersey, where he studied religion at Seton Hall University in 1995. He had been ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1999.

The school director and community would find out the grim background of their employee when the story was carried on local media.

Gatón (DeFrías) had been arrested when he was 31 years after the mother of two brothers under 14 walked in on him one time and complained to church officials. Gatón (DeFrías) subsequently would be convicted for fondling the two brothers that worked at the rectory of St. Mary’s of the Assumption in Elizabeth, New Jersey in 2001 and 2002. He was removed from the parish and eventually defrocked from the Roman Catholic Church. The man was first arrested in 2003 when he was living in Maryland. As part of his conviction in 2004, he was ordered to not take a job where he would work in any way with minors in the state of New Jersey.

In February 2019, leaders of the Catholic Church in New Jersey had published the names of 186 members that had been sanctioned by the church, charged with a crime or both. Hadmel Frias Gatón (DeFrias) is on the list. The publishing of the list was to help victims heal as more revelations have been made in recent months.

Read more:
NBC News
Listin Diario
El Tiempo
Hoy
NY Daily News
Bishop Accountability
NYPost

25 March 2019