[1] Upon his return to NY, Cardinal John O'Connor, whom he considered a mentor and friend, named him pastor of St. Patrick's Old Cathedral parish.
[1] The diocese of San Pedro de Macorís in Santo Domingo was very short of priests, so its bishop welcomed Hartley when O'Connor recommended him.
Ozoria warned Hartley's critics of opposing him out of a false sense of patriotism or because of racist attitudes toward the Haitian workers.
[3] Hartey later claimed he left the Dominican Republic because of his father's poor health, and others speculated that he was removed because business interests and politicians opposed his social activism.
Neither was it the result of any pressure whatsoever from the Government of the Dominican Republic, Cardinal López Rodríguez, or the Vicini family for me to make the decision to relieve Father Hartley of his pastoral duties and ask him to leave the San Pedro de Macorís Diocese.
[1] In December 2006 he returned briefly to the Dominican Republic accompanying a delegation of U.S. congressmen who were assessing the living conditions of the Haitian migrants.
[10] According to the Haitian newspaper Le Nouvelliste, the law firm Patton Boggs of Washington, D.C., which works for the Vicini family, tried to interfere with the distribution of the movie in France.
[14] From Europe, Hartley has continued to campaign for Haitian worker rights in the Dominican Republic; meanwhile he remains vilified in that country, with critics claiming he preaches "a gospel of hate".
The laundry list goes on and is further compounded during this harvest season (2008-2009) by new variations, which include: 1) failure to withhold social security (IDSS) contributions, leaving workers without basic benefits; 2) preservation of sub-standard, poverty-level wages; 3) new forms of fraud in the weighing of, and remuneration for, cut cane; 4) resurgence in trafficking of human persons (after a hiatus of approximately three years); 5) deprivation of entitled healthcare benefits; 6) arbitrary terminations and denial of earned benefits; and, 7) refusal to issue written contracts guaranteed under Dominican law.
"[16] In April 2012, Minister of Industry and Commerce of the Dominican Republic, Manuel Garcia Arévalo said that Hartley’s advocacy against the sugar industry in the Dominican Republic was based on his relations with sugar interests in Europe because he has family ties to executives of the London-based, employee-owned food trading company ED&F Man España SA, which deals in sugar and other commodities[17] through Rafael Fernando Muguiro Sartorius, the CEO of the company, a cousin, and William Alexander Hartley Sartorius, a member of the board, his brother.
Carlos Agramonte, a professor of engineering at the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo, authored a novel called El sacerdote inglés (The English Priest), which denounces slavery in the sugar cane industry by combining an account of Hartley's work with a fictional romance between a member of a sugar-controlling dynasty and a Haitian doctor.