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Daily Beast on Jeyapaul Story: "This May Be the Worst Case We’ve Ever Seen. What Does a Priest Have to Do to Get Kicked Out of the Catholic Church?"
By William D. Lindsey
Bilgrimage
April 24, 2016
http://goo.gl/uVOjic
This may be the worst case we’ve ever seen. What does a priest have to do to get kicked out of the Catholic Church?
Nadeau quotes David Clohessy of SNAP, who states,
I say this carefully and only after considerable thought. The Jeyapaul case is the worst case we've seen.
As I noted several days ago, Megan Peterson, whom Jeyapaul was convicted of raping in the parish he pastored in Greenbush, Minnesota, when she was fourteen years old, has filed a federal lawsuit seeking to block his reappointment to parish ministry in India. As Nadeau states, Jeyapaul has admitted to raping at least two girls in his Greenbush parish. She writes,
After being charged with the abuse, which included rape and forcing at least one of the girls to perform fellatio on him, he fled home to India, where he was eventually arrested on an Interpol warrant. He was then extradited back to Minnesota, where he admitted his heinous crimes and entered a plea bargain in which, in exchange for a lighter sentence, he copped to molestation of one of the girls.
Jeyapaul was suspended from the priesthood and served a year and a day in prison in Minnesota, then was deported back to India after his release last July. The Minnesota diocese where he worked also settled a civil lawsuit with the victims in which one accused him of systematic abuse in the confessional of the Blessed Sacrament Church in Greenbush, Minnesota, where he would then tell the girl it was her fault, that she had made him "impure."
How much more proof would one need that the man cannot be trusted with minors?
But in February the Vatican cleared Jeyapaul for reassignment in parish ministry — and he was made head of the diocesan commission on education. As Nadeau reports, Megan Peterson's response to these developments is to state that they make her feel "abused, degraded and re-victimized all over again." She is asking for damages from the Ootacamund diocese which is placing Jeyapaul back into ministry, and she maintains,
Children deserve to be protected in India and nobody is doing this at this point. This pope has said that bishops who cover up [sexual abuse] and the offending clerics have no place in the church. I feel like this is a slap in the face.
About an hour ago, I tweeted a link to Barbie Latza Nadeau's story. Already, five people have retweeted it. Eric Rohrs responded with the following tweet:
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