newjerseynewsroom.com

BY BOB HOLT

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

The boundaries of criminal jurisdiction are coming into question in the alleged sexual encounters that led to the arrest of two former Paramus Catholic High School employees.

NBC New York reports Michael Sumulikoski, 27, of Elmwood Park, and Michael Sopel, 31, of River Edge, were chaperones on a high school exchange program trip to Belgium and Germany.

It is not clear whether their acts would be prosecutable under German law, where the age of consent is 14 unless an adult over 21 who had sex with a minor under 16 is found by a court to have abused the younger person’s “lack of capacity for sexual self-determination,” according to the German Criminal Code.

But the Bergen County prosecutor and archdiocese officials said that Sopel and Sumulikoski can still be held accountable for allegedly having sex with underage students they were chaperoning on the trip.

NorthJersey.com reports Sopel, who was the school’s vice president of operations, and Sumulikoski, who was a substitute teacher and assistant football coach, were arrested Tuesday following a month-long investigation by the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office into allegations that they engaged in inappropriate sexual conduct with students while on a 10-day exchange trip to Germany and Belgium in February, Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli said.

After the initial allegations were reported, a former student alleged that Sopel had engaged in sexual activity with her in the spring of 2010 while she was enrolled at the school, according to Molinelli.

The men are facing American charges: Sopel was charged with sexual assault, endangering the welfare of a child, and hindering apprehension, Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said in a statement. Sumulikoski was charged with endangering the welfare of a child, the statement said.

Peter Mueller, an attorney at Harwood Lloyd in Hackensack, said the local law where a crime is committed generally applies in criminal cases, but under New Jersey statute, the state could assert jurisdiction if elements of a crime occurred in the state or if the statute that is being violated specifically reaches to out-of-state claims.

According to River Dell Patch, Raymond Flood, an attorney representing Sopel, and Robert Galantucci, representing Sumilikoski, both denied that their clients committed crimes while chaperoning students on the trip.

Both men were suspended without pay indefinitely by the Archdiocese of Newark in March after church officials learned of the investigation. James Goodness, spokesman for the archdiocese, said regardless of the outcome of the case, Sopel and Sumilikowski won't be coming back to the school and will be replaced.

It hasn’t been the school’s first incident. In 2009, New Jersey Newsroom reported that Mark Sorenson, a 55-year-old Paramus Catholic High School teacher of Clifton, was arrested by detectives from the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office and Paramus Police Department for showing nude photos to a teenage girl in her Paramus home.

The initial allegations were reported to the Department of Children and Families Institutional Abuse Investigation Unit, which contacted the prosecutor’s Sex Crimes and Child Abuse Unit, sparking the investigation, Molinelli said.

Sopel was released from the Bergen County Jail on Wednesday after posting $225,000 bail, while Sumulikoski also was released after posting $50,000 bail.