Retired Priest Sentenced for Molestation

Daily Breeze
August 24, 2012

http://www.oc-breeze.com/2012/08/24/17071_retired-priest-sentenced-for-molestation/

A retired priest with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange County was sentenced today for molesting a young boy almost two decades ago in the rectory and sacristy at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Costa Mesa. Denis Lyons, 78, Seal Beach, pleaded guilty March 23, 2012, to four felony counts of lewd acts on a child under 14. He was sentenced to one year in jail, five years of formal probation, 400 hours of community service, and lifetime sex offender registration.

Sexual Assault of John Doe

Between Jan. 1, 1992, and Dec. 31, 1995, Lyons molested a young male student, John Doe, while the victim was a second and third grade student at St. John the Baptist Catholic School. The school was part of St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Costa Mesa, where Lyons served as a priest.

On four occasions, Lyons sexually assaulted the 7 to 9-year-old John Doe by engaging in masturbation with the victim twice in his room in the parish rectory and twice in the church sacristy. A rectory is the residence and administrative office for the parish priests of a church. A sacristy is a room inside the church used to store religious garments, church documents, and sacred vessels.

In September 2008, John Doe filed a report with the Costa Mesa Police Department (CMPD). Lyons was arrested July 20, 2009, while playing cards at a local community center near his home in Leisure World in Seal Beach. He was arrested by detectives from CMPD with the assistance of the Orange County District Attorney’s (OCDA) Bureau of Investigation.

Prior Sexual Assault Case and Subsequent Supreme Court Ruling

In April 2003, Lyons was charged by the OCDA with molesting another boy under the age of 14 between 1978 and 1981. Two other male victims were alleged on the complaint as independent corroborative evidence, but were never charged due to the expiration of the statute of limitations. All three of the young boys attended St. John the Baptist Catholic Church while Lyons was a priest there.

The April 2003 case was dismissed for the following reason: Prior to 1994, California law allowed for charges to be filed for sexual crimes within six years from the date of violation. In 1994, a California law (then PC 801, now PC 803) was passed stating that criminal charges can be filed for sexual crimes that occurred outside of the 6-year restriction without limitation as long as certain criteria are met including; 1) The case must be filed within one year of being reported by the victim to law enforcement; 2) The crimes must be against a child under the age of 18 and include substantial sexual conduct such as masturbation, oral copulation, penetration by foreign object, sexual intercourse, or sodomy; and 3) The case must be corroborated by clear, independent, admissible evidence.

In July 2003, three months after Lyons was charged in Orange County for the molestation, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Stogner v. California that it was unconstitutional for the timeline for filing sexual charges to go back infinitely. The Court determined that PC 801 could not be used retroactively and only applied to crimes that occurred from the time the law went into effect. Any crime that occurred prior to the passage of PC 801 was subject to the 6-year limitation. As a result, sex crimes that occurred before 1988, or six years prior to the passage of PC 801 could no longer be prosecuted. The 2003 case against Lyons had to be dismissed because the statute of limitations had expired on the 1978 to 1981 molests.

In addition to being a priest at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Costa Mesa, Lyons is known to have been a priest at St. Edwards the Confessor Catholic Church in Dana Point and St. Mary’s by the Sea Catholic Church in Huntington Beach.

Victim Impact Statements

During the sentencing today, the People read a victim impact statement on behalf of John Doe and said in part, “Today is the day I finally have closure. I have spent the last 16 years living in pain, living in shame. He took away my innocence as a child. This man has ruined my life and many others besides me. He has changed my perception of religion, life, and right and wrong. Him pleading guilty not only gives me closure but gives other victims closure as well. He is a bad person, a bad man.”

John Doe’s mother gave a victim impact statement to the court and said in part, “There are not enough words to describe the impact of his sex abuse on my son at the age of 8 or 9 years old. Denis Lyons has destroyed the spirit within my son and the man that God had called him to be. The pain and shame is real and never goes away. The self-destruction is real and the heartache is real. No human being should have to go through what my son, the other victims, and our families have had to endure at the hands of Denis Lyons. He was a man of the cloth, someone to be trusted, and someone that was considered almost next to God himself. Denis Lyons’ hands, which held the consecrated host, which we as Catholics believe is the body of Christ, are the very same hands that abused my son as well as other victims.”

The People read an impact statement on behalf of one of Lyons’ other victims, which stated in part, “I was an innocent 10-year-old child who just suffered the death of my father; my mother thought that getting me involved with the church would help ease my pain. Unfortunately, there was an evil that no one could have ever seen coming. Shortly after becoming involved with the church, I became the victim of sexual abuse from a predator who falsely claimed to be a representative of God. As a child I was a victim, but now I am a man and I’m a survivor. I am now living my life, and trying to be the best person I can be.”

Lyons’ lifetime sex offender registration bars him from entering County recreational areas and City parks that have passed the Sex Offender Ordinance. Visit www.orangecountyda.com to read the prior press releases on the County’s Sex Offender Ordinance as well as the 13 other cities that have enacted the Child Safety Zone Ordinance including Costa Mesa, Huntington Beach, Irvine, Laguna Hills, Lake Forest, La Habra, Los Alamitos, Mission Viejo, Rancho Santa Margarita, Santa Ana, Seal Beach, Westminster, and Yorba Linda.

Senior Deputy District Attorney Heather Brown prosecuted this case.