Priest Who Turned Himself In Became Key Witness in Abuse Case

Six years after being ordained in 1970, Father Paul Aube realized he had a serious problem. The Roman Catholic priest couldn’t control his sexual urges, he said, and he molested several teenage boys.

Aube blew the whistle on himself. He said he told his superiors that he had sexual contact with the teens, asked his bishop for psychological counseling, and asked that he never again be assigned to work with children.

Instead, he said, he was assigned to a job that put him in regular contact with minors, and he stayed in public ministry -- first in youth work and later in hospitals -- for 18 more years.

Last year, Aube turned himself in again. He went to the New Hampshire attorney general’s office and, in exchange for limited immunity from prosecution, became a key witness in a state investigation of the church’s mishandling of clerical sex abuse cases.

“I’m willing to die for the church,” Aube told Associated Press. “But I had a moral responsibility, as the church teaches, to cooperate. I had a moral responsibility to participate with the civil authorities, and that’s what I did.”

The state’s investigation ended with an unprecedented settlement in which the Diocese of Manchester, which covers the state, admitted its handling of abusive priests had harmed children. The details will be in 9,000 pages of investigative files the state plans to release March 3.

Patrick McGee, spokesman for the diocese, would not comment on Aube’s claims. Former Bishop Odore Gendron, to whom Aube said he turned in 1976, did not return calls. Gendron retired in 1990.

Aube, 62, said he did get a psychological evaluation through the diocese in 1976. He said he learned only last summer that it deemed him fit to work with children.

Aube was never charged criminally, although several lawsuits against the diocese name him as an abuser. The diocese listed him last year as one of 15 priests who had been credibly accused of abuse.

In a scandal that has seen more than 325 priests resign or be removed from their posts since last year, Aube is one of the few to tell his story publicly.

Aube acknowledged in an interview that he molested several boys in their late teens between 1971 and 1980 while assigned to churches in Claremont, Berlin, Nashua and Rochester.

He said none of the abuse “was forcible, violent or was the kind of sexual contact that you would consider to be grave or serious. No one was under the age of 16.”

He also said he has never harmed another minor since starting psychological treatment -- at his own expense -- in 1981. Placed on administrative leave by the diocese in 1994, he lives in a camper and gets by on $750 a month he receives from the church.

Aube acknowledged that the harm he did to his victims can’t be undone, but he hopes his cooperation with authorities will help them. He said he still loves the church, but thinks its leaders were more concerned about image than doing the right thing.

“I know what my Lord stands for, I know what my church stands for, and I know what I want to stand for, and I betrayed that,” he said. “But I did whatever I could to rectify it. And I’m proud of that.”