DOWNERS GROVE (IL)
Chicago Tribune
March 12, 2006
FROM STAFF REPORTS Advertisement
A third former official of an area church is facing trial on sexual abuse charges, this one involving an alleged 2004 attack on an elderly woman in Alabama.
The son and brother-in-law of the accused man, Howard L. Blattel, confirmed he was a parishioner of Marquette Manor Baptist Church in Downers Grove for more than 20 years and served there as a deacon during the late 1990s and earlier this decade.
Blattel, 65, a former Bolingbrook resident, is charged with first-degree sexual abuse in Gadsden, Ala., where he has lived since 2003. He is accused of molesting a now 89-year-old woman there in August 2004, according to records in the Etowah County, Ala., clerk's office and an Oct. 5, 2004 report in the Gadsden Times newspaper.
Two other former officials of Marquette Manor and its academy, located on the 300 block of 75th St., were indicted earlier this month by a DuPage County grand jury on sex-related charges.