By Ill Bird
Naperville Sun
October 17, 2008
http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/napervillesun/news/1228147,6_NaS_10171939.article
WHEATON – The last of four former officials of a Downers Grove church to be convicted of sex-related crimes was sentenced Friday to serve a year in the DuPage County Jail work-release program.
Presiding DuPage County Circuit Court Judge Kathryn E. Creswell also placed the man, John Puga, on four years of sex offender probation, according to Paul Darrah, a spokesman for State's Attorney Joe Birkett. Creswell also ordered Puga to register as a sex offender and provide a sample of his DNA for a state criminal database, Darrah said.
Puga, 36, of Aurora, pleaded guilty to a felony charge of aggravated criminal sexual abuse, admitting he molested a then-17-year-old girl.
The abuse occurred between November 2001 and May 2002 while Puga worked part-time as the boys' basketball team coach at Marquette Manor Baptist Church and Academy, 333 75th St., Downers Grove.
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| John Puga |
Authorities said some of the abuse occurred on the church campus. The specific crime to which Puga pleaded guilty occurred inside the academy following a basketball game.
While the age of consent in Illinois is 17 in most cases, it rises to 18 when the accused is in a position of supervision, trust or authority over the victim.
The Naperville Sun reported exclusively on Feb. 12, 2006, about sex attacks in the 1990s and in 2001 upon two female parishioners of Marquette Manor.
Former youth pastor Edward D. Greene, 38, of Asheboro, N.C., was sentenced March 27 to four years in prison. The onetime Woodridge resident pleaded guilty to a felony charge of criminal sexual assault while in a position of trust for molesting a 17-year-old girl between April 11 and June 7, 1998.
The same girl was molested in 1998 and 1999 by then-deacon Frank W. Stima, 65, formerly of Naperville. Stima pleaded guilty to a felony charge of aggravated criminal sexual abuse and was sentenced in June 2006 to 60 days in DuPage County Jail and two years of probation.
His name was also entered into the Illinois State Police Sex Offender Registry, where he is characterized as a "sexual predator."
Stima and his wife later moved to Washington and settled near Seattle, opening a shelter for homeless women in Monroe, Wash. Stima was banned from the grounds of the mission following inquiries in 2006 by the Sun and the Monroe City Council.
Greene's and Stima's victim, now 28, lives in South Carolina. She filed a civil lawsuit earlier this year against Greene and the church, seeking a minimum of $50,000 in damages.
A fourth ex-Marquette Manor official was sentenced late last year to five years in prison in Alabama.
Howard L. Blattel, 68, formerly lived in Bolingbrook, and served as a church deacon in the late 1990s and earlier this decade. He was convicted last year of a charge of first-degree sexual abuse, for the August 2004 molestation of a then-88-year-old woman in Gadsden, Ala.
Contact: bbird@scn1.com
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