BOSTON (MA)
Telegram & Gazette
The Associated Press
BOSTON— A Jesuit priest who taught and coached at Boston College High School was sentenced Tuesday for molesting two teenage boys during wrestling drills.
The Rev. James Talbot was sentenced to five to seven years, plus three years of probation, during a hearing in Suffolk Superior Court. The 67-year-old priest pleaded guilty earlier this month just before he was to go on trial.
Prosecutors say he sexually assaulted two students in the late 1970s, when he was teaching history and coaching soccer and hockey at the all-male parochial school.
Talbot is the first member of the Jesuit order prosecuted in the Boston Archdiocese since the clergy sex abuse scandal erupted here in 2002.
He pleaded guilty to one count each of rape and assault with intent to rape, and three counts of assault and battery.
Prosecutors said Talbot held what he called "aggression drills" with students. In the case of the two victims, Talbot encouraged them to take most of their clothes off, then grabbed their genitals while they were wrestling with him. Talbot also orally raped one of the boys and tried to orally rape the other, but the youth broke free and ran out of the gymnasium, prosecutors said.
Posted by kshaw at January 25, 2005 02:18 PM