LEESBURG (VA)
Leesburg Day
Dan Telvock
Dec 22, 2005 -- In a letter sent to a Loudoun Circuit Court judge, a Chantilly pastor sharply criticized Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Plowman for his prosecution of Father Robert Brooks, a former Leesburg priest who pleaded no contest to attempting to possess child pornography, saying the prosecutor’s handling of the case was “not Christian.”
The Rev. Sean K. Rousseau of the Corpus Christi Catholic Mission in Chantilly, and a former pastor at St. John’s the Apostle Catholic Church in Leesburg where Brooks worked, wrote Circuit Court Judge Thomas D. Horne on Nov. 20 and stated he is appalled with the actions of Plowman in the Brooks case, saying Plowman is “a man who calls himself a Catholic, yet he purposefully persecutes a priest in the public forum for a private weakness.”
Rousseau’s letter was recently included in the court file for Brooks, 73, who was ordered to serve two years on probation after his sentencing Dec. 12. Horne was not the judge in the case because he recused himself, along with the other two Circuit Court judges.