Editor of sister papers arrested

Editor’s note: In the interest of full disclosure because a Straus Newspaper employee is involved, the following story is unusually graphic. Parents may want to decide whether it’s appropriate for their children to read. Mt. Olive Township, N.J. - The editor of two sister publications of the Warwick Advertiser has been charged with sexually assaulting his niece, a now 16-year-old girl who told authorities the abuse began when she came to live with him in 1997. Mario R. Palomo, 44, of Mt. Olive, was editor of the The Sparta Independent and The Township Journal. “Through the investigation it was learned that the defendant has been engaging in numerous acts of sexual contact and sexual penetration with the minor victim over the course of approximately nine years and in two states,” the Morris County Prosecutor’s Office said. In an interview this week, Meg Rodriguez, the assistant Morris County, N.J., prosecutor assigned to the case, said the investigation is ongoing and focuses on only one victim. According to an affidavit filed by Mount Olive Police Det. Luis M. Sanchez, Palomo “is the biological uncle of the victim who has sole custody and represents himself as her father.” Palomo is a native of El Salvador; the victim came to live with him when she was eight years old to attend school in this country, according to Sanchez’s affidavit. The young woman told police that at first, Palomo would force her to strip in front of him. Later, she said, it progressed to sexual intercourse, which, the victim told detectives, continued up until Aug. 20. She also told detectives that Palomo photographed her while they were having sex. Palomo was arrested Aug. 24. He is being held in the Morris County Correctional Facility on $1 million bail. He was suspended the next day without pay from his responsibilities as editor of the The Sparta Independent and The Township Journal newspapers, pending the outcome of the case. Jeanne Straus, president of the company which owns this and eight other weeklies, said that, if exonerated, Palomo would receive full back pay, but that if convicted, or if he pleads guilty, he would be fired. Rodriguez said Palomo has no prior criminal record. At the moment, he does not have a lawyer. At his bail hearing this past Monday, Palomo told New Jersey Superior Court Judge Salem Vincent Ahto that he could not make bail. According to a story that appeared in Tuesday’s Morristown Daily Record, Palomo said: “I have no money to meet that bail - any bail at all.” Meanwhile, Palomo’s aunt said the girl has returned to her mother in El Salvador. (For a more extensive version of this story and to read the Mount Olive Police Department’s arrest affidavit in its entirety, go to www.spartaindependent.com.)