LONG ISLAND (NY)
New York Daily News
BY TARA CONRY
DAILY NEWS WRITER
Equipped with gummy bears, lubricant and gay porn, a defrocked Pennsylvania priest was ready for sex with a boy but instead got busted by an undercover cop, police said.
Thomas Bender, 72, of Macungie, Pa., was arraigned yesterday in First District Court in Hempstead on five counts of first-degree disseminating indecent material to a minor and one count of attempting to commit a criminal sexual act.
Since September 2004, cops said, he engaged in online conversations with a detective who was posing as a teenager.
"During that year, he was grooming the boy - or who he thought was a 14-year-old boy," said Detective Sgt. Lucy Graziano of the Nassau County Police. "He was building a relationship through trust."