RHODE ISLAND
Providence Journal
01:00 AM EST on Monday, March 21, 2005
BY ZACHARY R. MIDER
Journal Staff Writer
A Roman Catholic priest who admitted raping a boy while serving at St. Joseph Church in West Warwick three decades ago has been defrocked.
James D. Campbell, 59, who was an assistant pastor of the parish from 1975 to 1978, entered a guilty plea last Dec. 22 and is serving a three-month sentence in the Worcester County, Mass. House of Corrections.
Church officials in Rome removed Campbell from the priesthood "about a month ago," said the Rev. Raymond Diesbourg, a member of the governing council of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, a religious order whose provincial offices are in Aurora, Ill. Campbell was a member of that order.
Campbell was indicted by a Worcester County grand jury in September 2003, accused of molesting the 16-year-old St. Joseph's parishioner in the summer of 1975.
Campbell was accused of taking the boy to a restaurant in Uxbridge, Mass. and plying him with alcohol before molesting him, according to the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.
Posted by kshaw at March 21, 2005 07:05 AM