Altar Boy

A Roman Catholic priest in Salem was sentenced to 12 to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to raping an altar boy in the 1980s and early '90s. Father Ronald H. Paquin, 60, was charged in May. He also has been named as a defendant in numerous lawsuits accusing him of molesting other boys.

In its landmark $660-million settlement with victims of sexual abuse five years ago, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles agreed to make public the confidential personnel records of all priests accused of molesting children. Victims said the release of the files would provide accountability for church leaders who let pedophiles remain in ministry, and law enforcement officials suggested that the documents could lead to criminal cases against those in charge. After years of delays and legal wrangling, the files are set to become public in coming weeks.

A Catholic priest pleaded not guilty to two counts of child molestation that allegedly occurred 30 years ago when he was assigned to St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church. The attorney for Gregory Kareta, 79, said Monday he would ask to have the charges dismissed. Kareta, recently of Avenal, remained free on $50,000 bond. He is accused of molesting an 11-year-old altar boy during the summers of 1973 and 1974.

A Roman Catholic monsignor, William J. Lynn, was sentenced to three to six years in prison on Tuesday for covering up sexual abuses by a priest he supervised in Philadelphia. “You knew full well what was right, Monsignor Lynn, but you chose wrong,” Common Pleas Judge M. Teresa Sarmina said, according to media reports from the courtroom. “I did not intend any harm,” Lynn said in court Tuesday. “My best was not good enough to stop that harm.” A former secretary for clergy to the late Philadelphia Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua, Lynn managed priests and investigated claims of misconduct from 1992 to 2004.

A former altar boy who said he was molested by his parish priest has filed a civil lawsuit against the Fresno Catholic Diocese and two churches. Juan Rocha, 27, accused the Rev. Eric Swearingen, a former priest at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Bakersfield and St. Alphonsus Church in Fresno, of abusing him from about 1985 to 1989. Rocha is seeking unspecified punitive damages from the diocese and the churches, said his lawyer, Raymond Boucher.

Convicted murderer Joseph Carl Shaw, a former altar boy and military policeman who blamed his violence on drug abuse, was electrocuted Friday in South Carolina's first execution in 23 years. Shaw, who was convicted of murdering two teen-agers, was pronounced dead at 5:16 a.m. at the Central Correctional Institution. In his final statment, the 29-year-old condemned man thanked his family, religious counselors, attorneys and well-wishers and apologized to his victims' families.

A lawsuit against the Catholic Church alleges that a priest molested a young boy 30 years ago at St. Killian Church in Mission Viejo. The accuser, named John Doe in the suit, says he was an altar boy in 1972, when Father Bertrand W. Horvath molested him. The suit, filed last week in Orange County Superior Court, alleges that church officials moved Horvath, a Franciscan priest, from "parish to parish, from diocese to diocese, from state to state, so as to make detection harder and ...

An altar boy sued two priests at St. Dominic's Catholic Church in Eagle Rock Monday, accusing the priests of giving him illegal drugs and sexually molesting him. The Superior Court suit names Cristobal Garcia and Juan Macias. The church and the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles are also named as defendants. The Rev. Joseph Battaglia, a spokesman for the archdiocese, said he could not comment on the suit because officials have not yet seen it.

A priest who was convicted of molesting four altar boys at his Huntington Beach church several years ago has been arrested in New Mexico on suspicion of child molestation, authorities said Wednesday. Andrew Christian Andersen was arrested in Albuquerque, N.M., on suspicion of child molestation, assault and kidnaping, police said. Albuquerque Police Sgt. John Sanchez said Andersen allegedly forced a teen-age boy into his vehicle, assaulted him and attempted to sodomize him.

A 34-year-old Roman Catholic priest in Huntington Beach was charged Friday with 24 counts of molesting an undisclosed number of altar boys during a 13-month period. Charges were filed by the Orange County district attorney's office Friday afternoon against Father Andrew Christian Andersen, one of the priests at St. Bonaventure Catholic Church, 16400 Springdale St. Police said Andersen is currently living away from the parish house.

A Pennsylvania jury Friday convicted Msgr. William J. Lynn of child endangerment for covering up sexual abuse of children by priests, but found the former Philadelphia archdiocese official not guilty of conspiracy and another endangerment charge. Lynn, 61, is the first Roman Catholic official in the U.S. to be tried and convicted on charges related to the church scandal in which priests across the country sexually abused children for years. In the landmark case, prosecutors said Lynn reassigned pedophile priests in Philadelphia while covering up allegations of sexual abuse.

It has been not quite a year since her teenage son jumped from a building and killed himself. And her grief is still so raw, she couldn't help lashing out after she read my Tuesday column about a forum on suicide at Agoura High. The advice offered that night to parents, stung by a string of recent deaths, seemed inadequate to her: Talk to your kids. Keep tabs on them. Don't let them use alcohol and drugs . "I pity the parents who think that by being on top of their kids 24/7, that by drug testing them every time they come home from a friend's house, that by hounding their children, they can protect them, can stop them from suicide," she wrote.

U.S. nuclear waste: A March 23 Section A article about U.S. nuclear waste management said a 2005 National Research Council study recommended that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission force utilities to partially unload pools of spent fuel rods at their nuclear power plants and move their oldest waste into dry casks, which are considered much safer. The council did not make a formal recommendation but advised the NRC to determine whether such a change would be prudent. Sexual abuse lawsuit: In the March 22 Section A, a brief news item about a civil lawsuit alleging sexual abuse by a priest in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia misspelled the name of a parish cited by the man who filed the suit.

Marie Massa calls the gardeners together for a meeting, and so they amble over, removing gloves and shaking off dirt as they form a half-circle. The group's treasurer, Garrett Broad, reports that their finances are good and they can afford a new 8-foot fence behind the tool shed. Kids have been hopping the old one to smoke marijuana when nobody's around. Pot smokers are not as destructive as the opossums, Broad says, but still ? Geraldo Martinez is there with his wife, Marlene De Leon.

If you've got rosary beads handy, please say a prayer for the leader of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Last week was not a good one for Cardinal Roger Mahony, and there may be no letup in weeks to come if a certain monsignor continues to testify in a deposition being taken as part of a civil case against Mahony and the diocese. Msgr. Richard Loomis, former vicar of clergy for the archdiocese, said under oath that in the year 2000 he wrote a memo advocating that the archdiocese inform police about allegations of sexual abuse by a now-defrocked priest named Michael Baker.

A former altar boy sued the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles on Thursday, alleging that he was sexually abused by a priest in 1987 shortly before the priest fled to his native Mexico to avoid criminal prosecution over other molestation allegations. The plaintiff, now 32, alleges that when he was 9 or 10, Father Nicholas Aguilar-Rivera molested him repeatedly at a Catholic church near downtown Los Angeles.

Michael Stephen Wempe wept Tuesday as a Houston man testified that the former priest used religion class to teach him about masturbation, then encouraged him to practice when they were alone. The testimony came during the second day of Wempe's trial on charges of abusing a boy in the early 1990s. Wempe, through his attorney, has admitted to molesting 13 boys decades ago, but denies the more recent abuse allegations. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Curtis R.

The priest took him, a poor boy from a troubled Antelope Valley family, on a motorcycle trip to Hearst Castle, on water and snow skiing outings and to high school golf tournaments. At the rectory at St. Elizabeth's Mission in Lake Hughes, the boy sat with Father Michael Edwin Wempe and the other priests, eating foods he'd never tasted before. Wempe even gave him an ATM card, warning him to limit withdrawals to $20 a day. "As an adult, when I think about it, I feel like I prostituted myself.