The man who hired and employed an accused child molester for 21 years said this week that he made a “mistake.”

“My first indication that something was off came from Rick Lavey,” said the Rev. Barry Gamache of St. Mary’s Church, referring to a postcard Mr. Lavey distributed during the 2006 election, when David E. Barboza was running for re-election to the Bristol Town Council.

The postcard reprinted a 1982 Bristol Phoenix article about the 28-year-old Barboza’s arrest for attempted solicitation of a minor. New light has recently been shed on the dismissed case, with a series of Boston Globe and Bristol Phoenix articles detailing multiple alleged cases of sexual abuse at the hands of Mr. Barboza.

“But David told me the case was dismissed, that there was nothing to it. Then when officer McCarthy (retired Massachusetts State Police Lt. Robert N. McCarthy, hired by the Diocese to investigate) came to me and gave me his interpretation, he never shared the depositions, just his summary.”

“I believed David. He was very persuasive. Two people told me two different stories. I accepted one, and it was a mistake.”

Rev. Gamache maintains that what he told the Boston Globe’s Amanda Milkovits, which she reported in a Sept. 25 article, is the whole truth. “I hired David, but nobody from town told me to watch out for him.”

The Rev. Gamache says no member of his congregation ever spoke to him directly about Mr. Barboza, a longtime congregant and employee of St. Mary’s Church since the late 1990s, where he served both at the altar and in the office.

“Of course if someone spoke to me directly about David, I would have done something. She claims I was confronted by a parishioner. That was true, but that was last week. He said to me, ‘I wish I said something 21 years ago,’ and I said, ‘I wish you had, too.’ ”

The Rev. Gamache insists, and hopes people understand, that he was not hiding or protecting Mr. Barboza.

“These incidents [alleged molestation] happened 15 years before I came to St. Mary’s,” he said. “When I came to St. Mary’s, I told people that I would protect their children, and I have. If anyone told me, if I had any indication that anything like this was happening on my watch, I would have done something about it immediately.

“This is an awful situation, but I feel that members of the congregation understand that I never attempted to shield David. I feel supported by the congregation.”

The Rev. Gamache arrived at St. Mary’s not long after a former priest, the Rev. William C. O’Connell, pleaded guilty to sexual misconduct involving young boys in New Jersey. He was sentenced to a prison term in 1994 and died two years later. The Rev. O’Connell served at St. Mary’s in Bristol from 1972 to 1985. He also served a year of prison work-release in Rhode Island in 1986 after pleading no contest to two counts of second-degree sexual assault and one count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor for acts involving three teenage boys. Father O’Connell admitted in court to masturbating while watching boys under the age of 13, taking sexually explicit photographs of boys, and allowing boys to watch pornographic videos in his home.

‘Father Gamache is a liar’

Mr. Lavey, the Warren plumber who twice dug up David Barboza’s past and brought it to Bristol voters via postcards and letters to this paper, recently spoke about the history of the case. He said that after he first mailed postcards to voters, he was invited to a Providence Diocese facility in Cranston to meet with the Diocese investigator, officer McCarthy. According to Mr. Lavey, the investigator questioned everything he knew about Mr. Barboza and his past, but he did not know anything directly other than the details of the 1982 arrest.

Responding to the Boston Globe article where the Rev. Gamache said no one told him about David Barboza’s past, Mr. Lavey said, “Father Gamache is a liar.” He said Father Gamache should have known about the Barboza accusations from his postcards, from the Diocese investigation, and from another event in the year 2000.

Mr. Lavey recalls a “Youth 2000” endeavor, when a group of young people from urban areas visited Bristol on an overnight trip. Mr. Lavey, a longtime parishioner of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, located on the same block as St. Mary’s, learned that a large group of boys would be spending the night in the basement at St. Mary’s. Mr. Lavey said he intervened and told the Rev. James Verdelotti to move the boys out of St. Mary’s, because he was worried about having them stay overnight in the church where David Barboza was an administrator. When the Rev. Verdelotti questioned him, Mr. Lavey told him about Mr. Barboza’s 1982 arrest and alleged actions.

— With contributions by Scott Pickering