Clergy Abuse

The civil trial of a former priest accused of child sex abuse will go ahead as planned in Northern California, rather than moving to Southern California, where the alleged abuse occurred, a judge ruled. An Alameda County Superior Court judge ruled Wednesday that the case against Mario Cimmarrusti, a former instructor at St. Anthony's Seminary in Santa Barbara, was already far enough along in Northern California and therefore should proceed to trial March 6.

A former Roman Catholic priest convicted of child molestation was sentenced in Phoenix to 111 years in prison. The Rev. Paul LeBrun was found guilty in November of sexually abusing boys when he worked in the Phoenix diocese from 1986 to 1991. LeBrun, 49, has been jailed since 2003. He was removed from public ministry in 1999.

A former priest allowed to remain in ministry after telling Cardinal Roger M. Mahony that he had molested children was arrested Thursday on suspicion of committing lewd acts with a child in the 1990s, with deputies taking him into custody as he disembarked from a plane at Los Angeles International Airport. The arrest caps a four-year effort by prosecutors to build a case against Michael Stephen Baker, who authorities said ranks among the most prolific alleged abusers in the church.

A retired Roman Catholic priest who has admitted molesting 13 boys goes on trial as early as today on charges that he abused another boy -- one he denies ever fondling. Father Michael Edwin Wempe is one of four priests from the Los Angeles Archdiocese to be charged with child molestation in Southern California since 2003, when similar charges were dismissed against nearly a dozen Catholic clerics -- part of a sex scandal that has rocked the U.S. Catholic Church.

A Houston man testified Wednesday that he became enraged and threw furniture in his house when he learned that the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed Father Michael Wempe, the Catholic priest who abused him, to walk out of jail a free man. "I broke things," the witness, identified in court as Greg J., testified in Wempe's trial on more recent molestation charges. "I was very upset. I did a lot of crying, and I did a lot of grieving."

Within minutes of taking the witness stand, one of Father Michael Wempe's sexual abuse victims burst into tears Thursday, gazing at a picture of his son, then 4, seated on the priest's lap at a Christmas gathering. "I can't believe I did that," the witness, identified only as Mark B., said Thursday, wiping his eyes. "I put my son on the lap of a pedophile." Wempe, on trial for allegedly molesting Mark B.'s youngest brother, met the family in the 1970s when they attended St.

The 26-year-old man at the center of retired priest Michael Wempe's sexual abuse trial testified Friday that Wempe fondled him in the early 1990s, several years after the priest had been treated for pedophilia and Cardinal Roger M. Mahony had returned him to the ministry. The man, identified in court as Jayson B., said Wempe molested him twice when he was 11 and 12 as he sat on the priest's lap using a computer in Wempe's office at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where Wempe was a chaplain.

The tears of the key witness in the trial of admitted child molester Father Michael Wempe turned to open defiance Tuesday as the retired priest's lawyer cross-examined him about details of his alleged abuse. The witness, who was identified in court only as Jayson B., had cried through three days of testimony about his alleged fondling and oral copulation by the priest, whom Cardinal Roger M. Mahony had assigned to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center after sending him for treatment for pedophilia.

A judge approved a settlement of up to $85 million Tuesday between sexual abuse victims and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Covington, one of the largest deals the church has reached with U.S. parishioners who were molested by clergy members. The settlement agreement covers 361 victims who say that they were abused over 50 years. Special Judge John Potter said a desire by the Covington Diocese to make reparations to the victims contributed to the settlement.

A mother testified Monday that she once considered Father Michael Wempe her friend as well as her priest, but now she loathes him for molesting at least two of her sons. Margaret Percival, 64, of Thousand Oaks put her head down and wept when Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Todd Hicks asked how she felt about her former confessor. "I despise him for what he has done to my children," she testified in the third week of the retired priest's molestation trial.