CINCINNATI (OH)
Dayton Daily News
By Tony Cook
The Cincinnati Post
CINCINNATI | A judge threw out a sex abuse case against a Catholic priest Monday, moments after the accuser testified.
"It's silly to go any further in this case," Judge Robert Ruehlman of Hamilton County Common Pleas Court said after hearing from the 21-year-old Hamilton man who accused the Rev. Raymond Larger of raping him repeatedly while the accuser was a student and altar boy from 1995 to 1997 at St. James Parish in White Oak, where Larger was pastor.
"His testimony was not credible. There's so much conflicting testimony here," Ruehlman said before cutting the trial short and finding Larger not guilty. "In good conscience, I can't allow this to go any further."
The case is not the first in which Larger has been accused of a crime. In July 2003, he was arrested in a Dayton park by an undercover police officer and charged with two counts of public indecency for grabbing the officer's groin and exposing himself.
Larger pleaded no contest, was convicted, given a 30-day suspended jail sentence, ordered to pay a $100 fine, $58 in court costs and serve one year on unsupervised probation. He was reinstated in May 2004.
The accuser in Monday's trial, who is serving a six-month sentence in Butler County for attempted breaking and entering and falsifying a police report, told the court that Larger had usually abused him on weekends in a vestibule in the back of the church.