WORCESTER - The Worcester County Grand Jury yesterday indicted the Rev. Joseph A. Fredette on charges that he sexually assaulted two boys placed in his care by the state 20 years ago.

It is the second set of indictments against Fredette in a month.

Fredette was indicted Sept. 16 on child sexual assault charges relating to a third boy who was placed in his care by the state about 19 years ago.

Fredette is a former Assumptionist priest who was the live-in director of Come Alive Inc., a group home for delinquent boys in Worcester in the early 1970s.

He fled to Canada in 1974 as Worcester police were investigating allegations he had sodomized two boys who had been sent to Come Alive by the state Department of Youth Services.

Fredette's telephone in Jailleteville, New Brunswick, has been disconnected. A call to Les Ermites de la Misericorde, a hermitage founded there by Fredette about 10 years ago, was answered by Dorothy Reed, a longtime resident. She hung up after saying the priest was not there.

1974 CHARGES

Worcester police brought six charges against Fredette in May 1974 in connection with that earlier investigation. But Fredette, by that time, already was out of the state and was never arrested.

Yesterday's indictments against Fredette alleged the following offenses:

Indecent assault and battery on a child under 14.

Five counts of committing unnatural acts.

Four counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

One count of procuring liquor for a minor.

The grand jury's charges relate to incidents that occurred from 1971 to 1973 in which Fredette is alleged to have sexually assaulted and procured liquor for two boys, who were 13 and 15 years old.

According to court records, one boy was molested starting Jan. 1, 1971, and continuing on diverse dates and times until Dec. 31, 1973. The other boy allegedly was molested from Feb. 1, 1972, to May 31, 1973.

District Attorney John J. Conte will now file an international extradition request through the U.S. State Department, seeking Fredette's return to Worcester for trial.

NO STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS

Massachusetts laws relating to statutes of limitations allow Fredette to be arrested on the charges even though they relate to incidents that occurred two decades ago. Because Fredette left the state, the statute of limitations does not apply.

Fredette lived at the 240-acre retreat in rural Jailetteville for nearly a decade until this summer, when, in the wake of a Telegram & Gazette investigative series, police reopened their investigation against him.

Since then, officials of the Catholic church in Canada have said Fredette has left his retreat.

The grand jury action came a day after Bishop Timothy J. Harrington issued a statement saying no "priest child-abuser" will be assigned to ministry in the Worcester Roman Catholic diocese. The bishop said this policy may cause anguish for priests who have molested children, but the bishop said he will not put children at risk.

The bishop called for people who have knowledge of sexual abuse by priests to contact him or other diocesan officials, and he asked children to tell their parents, relatives or adult friends if they are victims of inappropriate behavior by a priest.

 

WORCESTER -- A grand jury indicted a Roman Catholic priest yesterday for alleged sexual abuse of two boys in a halfway house he ran for troubled youths, prosecutors said. It was the second set of charges against Rev. Joseph A. Fredette, 59. He was indicted last month on charges of sexually abusing a 16-year-old in 1973. In the new indictment, Father Fredette is accused of abusing a 13-year-old and a 15-year-old from 1971-73, according to District Attorney John Conte. Conte hopes to extradite Father Fredette, who is now living in New Brunswick.

WORCESTER - A Worcester County Grand Jury indicted the Rev. Joseph A. Fredette yesterday on charges he sexually assaulted a boy who was placed in his care by the state 19 years ago.

The four indictments stem from incidents that occurred in 1973 when Fredette, a former Assumptionist priest, was the live-in director of Come Alive Inc., a group home for delinquent boys in Worcester.

The indictments cover a period from June 1 to Dec. 30, 1973, and all involve the same victim, who was 16 years old at the time.

They allege that Fredette:

Committed an unnatural act with the child.

Assaulted and beat the child.

Contributed to the delinquency of the child.

Unlawfully procured alcoholic beverages for the child.

Fredette fled to Canada during the original investigation by Worcester police and the state Department of Youth Services. In May 1974, police issued six complaints charging that Fredette had sodomized two boys, one age 13 and the other 16, in the group home.

But Fredette had already left the state by then and was not arrested.

District Attorney John J. Conte said an arrest warrant has been issued on the new indictments.

He said his office will file a request with the U.S. Department of Justice and the State Department seeking Fredette's arrest in Canada and his extradition to Worcester to stand trial.

Conte and Worcester police reopened the case after a Telegram & Gazette investigation disclosed new allegations against Fredette and reported that he was living at a retreat in rural Jailletville, New Brunswick.

Conte said the original complaints named two victims, while the indictments issued yesterday name one.

Because of the time that has passed, Conte said, "One of the cases could not be reconstructed; one was."

He said three new matters under investigation relate to some of Fredette's alleged victims who have come forward recently with their stories.

Conte did not release the name of the alleged victim.

In July, Dana Vyska of Pittsfield, after seeing a television program on alleged sexual abuse by another priest, called the Telegram & Gazette to say he was raped by Fredette when he was 15 and living at Come Alive.

Vyska said yesterday the experience of publicly talking about the rape "has made me feel good about myself."

"I've never had anyone take an interest in what happened to me," Vyska said. "I'm a nobody. But now I feel like I am important person and that I did something right."

Vyska said he has gotten letters of support from people who have praised his actions in publicly talking about a subject that used to be hushed up.

News of the new indictments also brought a response from officials of the Catholic Church in Canada.

The Rev. Ernest Leger, vicar general for the Diocese of Moncton, N.B., said Archbishop Donat Chiasson also has been looking unsuccessfully for Fredette to ask about the allegations against him in the Untied States.

Leger said he has talked with people living at Les Hermites de la Misericorde in Jailletville, the retreat where Fredette has lived for nearly a decade, who say Fredette is no longer there.

"He is not in the diocese now," Leger said. "This bishop is trying to get in touch with him."

Leger said he was not aware of yesterday's indictment until receiving a call from a Telegram & Gazette reporter.

"Up to now it was allegations," he said.

The vicar general said to his knowledge Fredette's right to administer sacraments in the diocese has not been suspended.

Roderick MacLeish, a Boston lawyer who is representing several alleged victims of former priest James R. Porter, commended Conte for seeking a grand jury indictment against Fredette.

MacLeish was critical of Massachusetts law that puts a statute of limitations on sexual abuse cases.

Conte interpreted state law correctly when he determined that once a person flees the United States, the statute of limitation is suspended, MacLeish said.

MacLeish said Canada has no statute of limitations on these cases, and he called for an end to the practice in this state.

"It's sad, but we could not have any reason to comment," said Monsignor Edmond T. Tinsley of the Worcester diocese.

Tinsley said Fredette was never a priest of the Worcester Diocese and was under jurisdiction of the Augustinians of the Assumption at the time the Worcester offenses allegedly occurred. Staff reporter Gary V. Murray contributed to this report.

Rev. Joseph A. Fredette, a Waltham-born priest who reportedly fled to Canada in 1974 after facing six charges of assault and battery against children in Worcester, has been indicted by a Worcester County grand jury. Worcester District Attorney John J. Conte said in a brief statement yesterday that Fredette was charged with unnatural acts, assault and battery, contributing to the deliquency of a minor and procuring liquor for a minor.

The charges arose out of an incident in December 1973, in which Father Fredette allegedly sexually assaulted and procured liquor for a 16-year-old boy, Conte said.

At the time, Father Fredette was a priest and member of a Catholic order of the Augustinians of the Assumption, as well as the executive director of the "Come Alive" program for disadvantaged youth in Worcester. The alleged victim was a resident of this program, according to Conte's statement. The halfway house was closed in the mid 1970s.

In 1974, complaints were taken out against Father Fredette but he allegedly fled the country for New Brunswick, where he was reportedly invited to live in the rectory of St. Timothy's church in the small village of Adamsville. His assignment at the church was terminated in 1984, according to a New Brunswick church official, and since then Father Fredette, now 59, has lived quietly as leader of a small community in the nearby rural village of Jailetyville. Father Fredette is said to have left the Assumptionist order in 1983 but remained an ordained priest.

The priest's legal problems in the United States surfaced after Dana Vyska, a Pittsfield resident who had lived in the halfway house as a youth, contacted reporters and accused the priest of sexually assaulting him in New Hampshire after giving him two six packs of beer.

The matter was investigated by Detective Thomas Belezarian and other members of the Worcester Police Department. Belezarian declined to comment yesterday on where Father Fredette is.

In a telephone interview yesterday Vyska said he feels "happy and relieved" that Father Fredette has finally been indicted on the 18-year-old charges. Attorney Roderick MacLeish Jr., who with Boston attorney Larry Hardoon represents Vyska and one other alleged victim of the priest said yesterday it was unclear how many other youths might have been sexually molested by him. MacLeish, who also represents 70 alleged sexual abuse victims of former Massachusetts priest James R. Porter, who now lives in Minnesota, drew a parallel between the Fredette and Porter cases, and said he hoped the indictment of Fredette would hasten similar action in Bristol County, where Porter formerly lived. In both cases, he said, it is possible to stay the state's statute of limitation law, which mandates a freeze on the six-year limitations when an accused leaves the state.

It is five months since the first public allegations surfaced against Porter, and Bristol County District Attorney Paul F. Walsh Jr. has indicated that the limitations issue has posed problems in bringing charges.

WORCESTER - Officials of Come Alive Inc. learned of criminal allegations against the Rev. Joseph A. Fredette in 1973, but refused to believe them, according to a former board member and a former counselor at the group home.

Carol Schmidt, a former Come Alive board member who also has served as a director of YOU Inc. and worked with other agencies that help troubled young people, said yesterday she resigned from the board in 1973 over its refusal to take the accusations seriously.

Robert Kennelly, who began his career in social work 20 years ago as a counselor at Come Alive, said he quit that job when then Chairman Philip W. Callahan and other board members refused to investigate allegations of sexual misconduct by Fredette.

Kennelly said one of the youths who lived in the home on Channing Street confided to him that he had been taken to a rustic cabin owned by Fredette in Raymond, N.H., and had been sexually assaulted there by the priest.

"I brought this to the board, and they weren't doing anything," Kennelly said in a recent interview. "Callahan told me he (Fredette) was a priest and couldn't do it. Well, priests aren't infallible ... The board basically told me I was crazy."

Callahan was chairman of the Come Alive board in 1973 and 1974. He refused to comment on the case, saying he had been told by Worcester police the Fredette matter was "an ongoing investigation and not to speak to anybody."

Fredette was charged in May 1974 by Worcester police with six counts of indecent sexual assault on a child and assault and battery, but fled to Canada and was never arrested. Yesterday, a Worcester County grand jury returned four indictments against Fredette in the 19-year-old case.

Come Alive was home to teen-agers with a variety of problems, including drug and alcohol abuse. It closed shortly after Fredette left the United States.

Schmidt said she initially became concerned in the early 1970s about Fredette's handling of agency accounts. There were numerous inconsistencies and what she believed to be improprieties in Fredette's spending, she said.

She said she also heard about sexual misconduct by Fredette with the youths who were in his care. She complained to the board, she said, and especially to Callahan. But the board discounted her complaints and Callahan defended Fredette, she said.

"He never believed me when I tried to tell him what was happening," she said. "The board refused to believe me, and I became the bad guy. So after a while I just gave up. I had other things to do than be a bad guy."

Schmidt, who helped get the halfway house started in 1970, said she was very happy that police were now trying to bring Fredette back to stand trial.

Schmidt said that years after her time on the Come Alive board, while working in the Worcester County Jail she encountered two men who had been wards at the home.

"They told me right out when they were in the jail that Fredette had molested them, and they had nothing to lose at that point by telling me," she said. "So then I knew my suspicions had been true. I asked them why they'd put up with it and didn't say anything. Both of them said to me separately they were afraid of being kicked out if they told and had no place to go. That's a natural reaction, and it's kind of too bad."

Kennelly, now of West Sumner, Maine, said that during his tenure as a Come Alive counselor, Fredette used to take the youths to the camp in New Hampshire as a reward.

"I had been to that camp one weekend," Kennelly said. "Fredette was supposed to take a group of kids up to that camp but couldn't. I thought it was awfully strange to go into the camp and find that this guy had taken a double bed up there ..."

WORCESTER - A former Assumptionist priest wanted here on child-rape charges has apparently left his rural Canadian retreat in the wake of international publicity and renewed police interest in his case.

Telephones listed to the Rev. Joseph A. Fredette and to his parish rectory in Jailletville, New Brunswick, have been disconnected with no referral. Parishioners and others in that area who knew Fredette told the Canadian Broadcasting Co. and reporters in the United States that Fredette has left his 240-acre rural retreat with no forwarding address.

Fredette, who taught for 12 years at the former Assumption Preparatory School in Worcester, was the live-in director of the Come Alive Inc. home for delinquent boys in Worcester in the early 1970s. But he left Worcester in 1974 as charges were being investigated that he had sodomized two boys, one 13 and the other 16. Both boys had been committed to his care by the Department of Social Services.

INVESTIGATION REOPENED

Worcester police and District Attorney John J. Conte reopened the investigation of those charges after a Telegram & Gazette investigative report disclosed Fredette's whereabouts and new allegations from one of his alleged victims.

Warrants for Fredette's arrest that date from May 1974 still are outstanding. Conte earlier this week said he was investigating possible extradition of Fredette from Canada.

Fredette's activities since leaving Worcester have been questioned by some of his associates and former parishioners in Canada.

The Rev. Gilles Blouin, provincial for the Augustinians of the Assumption order in Canada, said Fredette was at the Monmatre Sanctuary of Quebec until 1982 and left the order in 1983, although he remains a priest.

BECAME PASTOR

After leaving the Monmatre Sanctuary, Fredette became pastor of St. Timothy's Church in Adamsville, New Brunswick, a rural community about 30 miles north of Moncton.

Robert Bernard of Harcourt, New Brunswick, president of the parish council at St. Timothy's, said Fredette was removed as pastor in 1984 after the parish council complained to Archbishop Donat Chiasson of Moncton about financial irregularities.

The council president said yesterday that no one in the parish knew until this week that Fredette was a fugitive wanted on criminal charges in the United States.

They first learned of the charges, he said, when a news crew from the Canadian Broadcasting Co., following initial Telegram & Gazette reports, went to Harcourt to tape a report on Fredette.

SHOWING TRUE COLORS

Bernard said Fredette was sent from Monmatre to St. Timothy's "on one year's probation" by the archbishop. He said Fredette "did not show his true colors" for another year and it took parishioners until 1984 to have Fredette removed.

No criminal charges were filed and all efforts to remove Fredette went through the archbishop, Bernard said.

St. Timothy's is a parish of about 60 families from Adamsville and Harcourt.

Parishioners first became upset when Fredette moved 20 boys in their teens and early 20s into St. Timothy's rectory with no parish approval or advance notice.

WELFARE BENEFITS

Bernard said that Fredette helped the boys sign up for $400 a month each in Canadian welfare benefits and then had the boys give him their monthly welfare checks. According to Bernard, Fredette turned none of that money over to the parish.

The parishioners "were paying for the upkeep on the rectory while he boarded the boys there," Bernard said.

The parish, which had been free of debt, went into debt under Fredette's tenure, Bernard said.

Recordkeeping was poor and when parish council members confronted Fredette, he would "hit the roof" and say they had no right to question him, Bernard said.

WORK OR PAY

Occasionally a boy who could not qualify for welfare would show up at Bernard's farm looking for work, he said. Bernard said he was told by one boy that he was required to turn over to Fredette all his money. Another boy told him he had to pay Fredette $200 a month "or get kicked out."

Bernard said parishioners eventually were successful in getting the welfare office to cut off the boys' allotments. He said the youths were able-bodied "but too lazy to work."

Bernard said parishioners also had personal conflicts with Fredette. He said Fredette was "too domineering" and divided members of the congregation.

Fredette bought the 240-acre property at Jailletville in 1984, Bernard said, and moved there in July 1984 to become a "hermit."

GLOWING REPORTS

Fredette, in letters to one of his alleged sexual-abuse victims in the Worcester area, talked glowingly of the hermitage. Fredette wrote that he had other "hermits" who were living on the Jailletville acreage, and about 65 "associates" who stayed there for varying periods.

Jailletville was a village about 15 miles from Moncton that had about a dozen families until they all moved away to get jobs, Bernard said.

Bernard said Fredette received $30,000 from a nun who inherited the money from her family. The nun later went to live with another nun who had introduced her to Fredette, Bernard said.

SEED MONEY

"That was the money he used to begin with in Jailletville," Bernard said.

Bernard said Fredette persuaded some of the St. Timothy's Church members to join him in his hermit activities, which the council president described as a "cult."

These people then "worked against" other parishioners, Bernard said.

Fredette's followers were involved in charismatic spirituality that involved "speaking in tongues," Bernard said.

Church bulletins that Fredette sent to a former resident of Come Alive Inc. show that charismatic services were being conducted at the hermitage at the time.

The offices of the archbishop and Moncton Diocese were closed yesterday and no diocesan official could be reached for comment. Announcements on the diocesan answering machines said the offices would be closed until Sept. 8.

Rev. Joseph A. Fredette did not leave controversy behind when, facing six charges of indecent assault and battery against children, he left Worcester and the country in 1974. The Waltham-born priest apparently moved to Canada soon after leaving Worcester, where he had served as director of a halfway house for teen-age boys. Initially invited to live in the rectory of St. Timothy's Church in the small village of Adamsville, New Brunswick, Father Fredette was subsequently asked to serve as parish priest.

As such, parish residents say, he immediately stirred the wrath of townsfolk, in part by lodging some 10 troubled boys and three women in the rectory.

Within 12 months, they say, parishioners were pleading with the Moncton archbishop to have Father Fredette removed.

"Father Fredette obviously wanted a lifestyle that differed with the church," said Archbishop Donat Chiasson. He said Father Fredette's assignment at the church was terminated on July 6, 1984. Since then, Father Fredette, now 59, has lived as leader of a small, reclusive community on land he purchased in the neighboring rural village of Jailetyville.

Canadian church officials and residents say they were unaware of outstanding charges against Father Fredette until news stories began surfacing last week.

"I knew something was wrong when the guy arrived and threatened us to accept his ways or face his friends in the FBI," said Robert Bernard, a member of St. Timothy's Church in Adamsville.

"He's more of a cult leader up here than a priest," Bernard added.

A man identifying himself as Father Fredette hung up when a Globe reporter telephoned him at his residence last Friday. The priest's telephone has since been disconnected. One acquaintance, requesting anonymity, said Father Fredette had "left town for a couple of weeks."

When a member of Father Fredette's Jailetyville community was contacted, she snapped: "I never talk publicly about Reverend Joe."

She also hung up.

Father Fredette's legal problems in the United States reemerged last week after Dana Vyska of Pittsfield contacted the Globe and the Worcester Telegram and Gazette accusing Father Fredette of a 1972 assault.

In tears, Vyska praised the courage of victims who recently have publicized long-closeted alleged sexual abuse by priests. Then Vyska, now a husband and father, described a night when, he said, he was 15 and Father Fredette served him two six-packs of Maximus Super beer, then sexually assaulted him.

At the time, Father Fredette directed Come Alive, a halfway house where Vyska lived. The facility closed in the mid-1970s. Vyska has retained a lawyer and said he intends to contact authorities about the alleged assault.

A subsequent call to Worcester District Court revealed outstanding charges against Father Fredette for alleged indecent assaults on two other residents of the halfway house, ages 13 and 16, in 1974.

Detective Thomas Belezarian of the Worcester Police Department participated in the 1974 investigation. He said that when he tried to notify Father Fredette of the charges, he was told the priest "has just moved" to Canada.

Belezarian would not comment on the case yesterday except to say police and Worcester District Attorney John Conte were "intensely" pursuing old records that might allow extradition proceedings against the priest.

Father Fredette was born in 1933, the son of a garage mechanic and housewife, according to his birth certificate. In 1947, after the family moved from Lexington Terrace in Waltham to Worcester, he enrolled, then graduated from the Assumption Preparatory School.

In 1950 he entered Assumption College, also located in Worcester, graduating in 1955. He returned to the college to earn a master's degree in philosophy in 1963, according to school records.

The Official Catholic Directory indicates that, by 1970, Father Fredette had been ordained and was a member of the Augustinians of the Assumption. The educational/missionary order was founded in the mid-1800s in France; similar to such orders as the Society of Jesus and the Benedictines, Assumptionists report directly to superiors in Rome and are not part of a local diocesan hierarchy.

When Belezarian learned Father Fredette had moved to an Assumptionist residence in Sherbrook, Quebec, he issued an arrest warrant.

Father Gille Louan, a spokesman for the residence, said neither he nor his predecessor, Father Marcel Poirier, knew of the outstanding warrant. He said Father Fredette left the Assumptionist order in 1983 after his move to Adamsville but remains an ordained priest.

According to alumni records at Assumption College, Father Fredette requested in 1983 that his middle initial be changed from "A." to "R." He did not give a reason for the change.

"He started out so friendly, so nice," recalled Leo Bastrash, a retired truck mechanic and member of St. Timothy's Parish.

"He turned out to be so slick the way he convinced people to leave him money," he said.

Apparently, Father Fredette had arrived in town with plans to live an ascetic life. But when he assumed the duties of parish priest and strangers started arriving from other points in Canada and were given lodging at the rectory, parishioners from some of the 65 families belonging to the church got worried.

"Then he started trying to stack our church council with his supporters. We were losing control. Totally losing it," Bernard said.

He said one of Father Fredette's favorite opening lines for a sermon was: "I had a dream last night. All the people in this parish were going to Hell."

He said Adamsville has never been the same since Father Fredette arrived.

WORCESTER - District Attorney John J. Conte is investigating possible extradition from Canada of a former Assumptionist priest in connection with an 18-year-old sexual assault case.

Police and the district attorney have reopened the case against the Rev. Joseph A. Fredette, who has been living in Canada since warrants were issued for his arrest in 1974.

The Rev. Gilles Blouin, provincial for the Augustinians of the Assumption order in Canada, said Fredette left the Monmatre Sanctuary of Quebec in 1983 and is no longer an Assumptionist. The sanctuary is operated by the Assumptionists, he said.

DIRECTOR OF HOME

Fredette once directed a live-in home here for delinquent boys. He was charged with sexually assaulting two boys, one 13 and the other 16, who were committed to his care by the Department of Youth Services when he was director of Come Alive Inc. in the early 1970s.

Conte said police are trying to locate the victims named in the 1974 complaints and some investigative records that may have been lost.

"At this moment I believe they (police) have a line on one of the victims," Conte said. "We are waiting to hear some answer on that."

Conte said that without the police records and testimony of the two victims, "we have no case."

He said if he later determines he has a case, he will ask the U.S. Justice Department to begin extradition proceedings. He cautioned, however, that extradition from Canada to the United States is not easily done.

WOULD BE CALLED RAPE

Conte said the charges made against Fredette in 1974, which included indecent assault and committing unnatural acts, would be called rape now, but were not called rape then.

Detective Lt. John J. McKiernan said the victims will have to be interviewed again once they are located.

"There's a considerable amount of work on our end to do before we make an effort to extradite him," McKiernan said. "But we are pursuing this actively."

Fredette was not arrested at the time because police were unable to locate him in Canada. The warrants for his arrest, according to police and court officials, still are outstanding.

Fredette has been living for several years at a hermitage in rural Jailletville, near Harcourt, New Brunswick.

In letters to one of his alleged victims, Fredette said he was part of a group of "three hermits and 65 associates" who live on a 240-acre communal retreat.

He described the retreat as a grouping of cabins, barns, other small farm buildings, and a chapel, where the hermits and associates raise small livestock and conduct worship services.

The hermitage is in the diocese of Moncton, New Brunswick.

A woman who answered the telephone at the diocesan office said no one would be in the offices until September.

Roderick MacLeish, a Boston lawyer, said he has been contacted by people who say they were molested by Fredette and is considering becoming involved in the case.

MacLeish also is the lawyer representing 68 people who charge they were sexually molested by James R. Porter when he was a parish priest in North Attleboro.

 

the Worcester Police Department and district attorney's office are searching for court and investigative records relating to the 1974 case of a priest in the alleged assault of two youths there as they mull extraditing the priest from New Brunswick. According to law enforcement sources who asked not to be identified, before officials can seek the extradition the city and county investigators must determine if the alleged victims in the case can be located and are able to testify.

Rev. Joseph Fredette, former director of a halfway house in Worcester operated for the state Department of Youth Services, was charged with six counts of assault and battery in May 1974. The charges, filed in Worcester District Court, stemmed from alleged incidents involving two youths, 13 and 16, living at the halfway house.

According to newspaper accounts on the weekend, Father Fredette disappeared shortly after the charges were filed and Worcester Police have had no contact with him since.

However, Father Fredette was located by the Globe and by the Worcester Telegram Gazette last week residing in a hermitage in New Brunswick. Father Fredette, according to a priest at the Monmatre sanctuary in Quebec who knows him, has lived in the hermitage for at least the past 10 years.

Before that, according to Rev. Marcel Lessard of Quebec, Father Fredette lived and worked as a priest with the Augustinians of the Assumption, a missionary order, in Quebec, where he had been assigned after moving from Massachusetts.

Law enforcement sources said that Worcester District Attorney John Conte would petition the US Justice Department to request Father Fredette's extradition if he determines that the alleged victims and other witnesses in the case can be located and are still willing to testify.

In addition, investigators must determine when Father Fredette actually left Massachusetts to make certain that the 6-year statute of limitations on prosecuting such assault cases has not tolled. Under Massachusetts criminal law, the statute of limitations is frozen if a defendant flees the state to avoid prosecution before the six years have passed.

A Roman Catholic priest who disappeared in 1974 after being charged with molesting two teen-agers in Worcester apparently has been living in New Brunswick, Canada, for the past 10 years. Rev. Joseph Fredette, a former director of a halfway house in Worcester operated for the state Department of Youth Services, still faces six counts of moral offenses and two charges of assault and battery, authorities said.

The charges, filed in Worcester District Court in May 1974, stem from alleged incidents involving a 13-year-old boy and a 16-year-old youth at the halfway house, authorities said.

Worcester police said they have had no contact with Father Fredette since he disappeared.

Father Fredette, who was 39 when he was charged by Worcester police, now lives in a hermitage in the woods of Harcourt, New Brunswick, according to Rev. Marcel Lessard, a priest at Montmatre sanctuary in Quebec.

Like Father Fredette, Father Lessard is a member of the Augustinians of the Assumption, a missionary order.

Lessard said Fredette told him several years ago that he had been involved in a "misunderstanding" with law enforcement authorities.

"I know there was something, but the accusations were not tried," said Father Lessard. "He has always been working as a priest and nothing like that happened here."

"He told me that there was somebody who was trying to pin something on him," Father Lessard continued. "He was accused of things because of that, but he said there was nothing to any of it."

A man identifying himself as Father Fredette hung up on a Globe reporter who phoned him at his residence in New Brunswick on Friday morning and asked him to comment on the charges. Additional phone calls went unanswered.

Father Fredette's whereabouts since he disappeared are not known for certain. According to an Associated Press story at the time the charges were filed against him, Father Fredette had resigned from the Come Alive halfway house on Feb. 13, 1974. After first living in New York, the AP reported, Father Fredette moved to Quebec, where he was believed to be living at that time.

According to Father Lessard, Father Fredette was "assigned" to Quebec in the late 1970s from Massachusetts. After working there for several years, he left in 1982 for New Brunswick. Father Lessard said that Father Fredette visits Quebec every few months.

"He comes by once in a while," Father Lessard said, adding that some people donate books and clothes to Father Fredette.

At the Assumptionist Center in Brighton, a facility run by the order, a man who answered the telephone but declined to give his name said the center would have no comment regarding Father Fredette. "We've lost track of him completely," he said. "We just have no comment on this whole thing that's happening."

Father Lessard said no authorities from Massachusetts or anywhere else ever contacted the sanctuary about Father Fredette.

Worcester Police Detective Sgt. Leo Tivnan said Friday that a valid arrest warrant exists for Father Fredette and if he were apprehended he would likely be brought back for trial.