IOWA
Quad-City Times
By Barb Ickes : Viewpoint
It was a bizarre moment among twisted moments. In a Scott County courtroom about a month ago, a judge warned a defrocked priest that “perjury can sometimes be a crime.”
For starters, there’s something wrong with a sentence that contains the words “defrocked priest, judge and perjury.”
But there was a whole lot that felt wrong about the sex-abuse case against James Janssen. Though the 83-year-old former Catholic priest from Davenport was found liable for the sexual abuse of his nephew during a civil trial, he never was found guilty of anything criminal.
Big difference.
It appears now that Janssen will again escape prosecution in what some people assumed was an open-and-shut case against him.