DETROIT (MI)
Detroit Free Press
January 11, 2005
BY DAVID CRUMM
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
The older brother and sister of a Detroit boy who has accused a Catholic priest of sexual abuse testified in the priest's trial Monday that they were more concerned about the priest's behavior than their parents were.
National attention is focused on the Wayne County Circuit Court trial of the Rev. Luis Javier de Alba Campos, a visiting priest from Mexico who was pastor of St. Gabriel Catholic Church in Detroit in early 2004. In court, his attorneys have admitted that the priest got drunk during a pastoral visit with the family and spent the night sleeping it off in a bedroom in their southwest Detroit home.
At issue is whether the priest also sexually abused one of the children, a boy who was then 7 years old, in the bedroom they shared one night last April.
David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said people across the country are following this case. Most accusations that surfaced during the Catholic sex-abuse scandal over the last three years involve incidents that occurred years ago.
"Bishops desperately want us to believe that this is ancient history," Clohessy said. "Of course, this proves that it's not."
Posted by kshaw at January 11, 2005 07:37 AM