LONG ISLAND (NY)
Newsday
BY ALFONSO A. CASTILLO
STAFF WRITER
December 16, 2004
A suspended Catholic priest who has pleaded guilty to charges that he sodomized a 6-year-old boy failed to appear at a scheduled sentencing for the second time in Riverhead yesterday, prompting prosecutors to threaten arrest if he doesn't show again.
The Rev. Barry Ryan, 56, of Palm City, Fla., confessed to abusing the boy in a private home on Long Island while visiting last year. Ryan, who served in parishes in Brooklyn and Queens in the 1970s and '80s, was suspended from priestly duties in 1995, following accusations that he engaged in inappropriate sexual activities while working as an Air Force chaplain in Mobile, Ala.
Ryan pleaded guilty in October to the charge, formally called second-degree course of sexual conduct against a child. Because he is dying from liver cancer, prosecutors and the victim's family agreed on a sentence of only 2 years, possibly to be served outside of prison.
But Ryan failed to attend two scheduled court dates in the past week, at which he was to receive his sentence from County Court Judge Ralph Gazillo. Instead Ryan remained in a Maryland hospice where he is receiving medical treatment.
Posted by kshaw at December 16, 2004 08:40 AM