PENNSYLVANIA
News & Observer
Joann Loviglio, The Associated Press
A judge broke down in tears Friday as she gave probation to a priest who had a sexual relationship with a teenage student in the late 1970s. The priest was transferred to Raleigh in 1980.
"I've worried about this case for months now, and I can't pretend to any one of you that I know what the right thing to do is," Common Pleas Judge Pamela Dembe tearfully said. "Where I get stuck is I don't know how to balance one very terrible violation against the 30 years that followed."
The Rev. James J. Behan is the only priest charged in Philadelphia since the church abuse scandal broke in 2002. He has been barred from public ministry and lives in Childs, Md., where he works at a home for elderly priests.
Behan, 61, a member of the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, performed oral sex on the teenager on multiple occasions from 1978 to 1980, when he taught religion at Northeast Catholic High School for Boys, prosecutors said.