CALIFORNIA
Patch
By Paige Austin
May 25, 2012
It’s been 20 years since Leisure World resident and former priest Denis Lyons began molesting a nine-year-old altar boy at his Costa Mesa parish St. John the Baptist Church.
Since that time, the sexual abuse scandal rocked the Catholic Church, and laws were changed to free victims from the narrow window that the statute of limitations placed on child sex crimes. Lyons’ story reverberates the church wide scandal, the legal evolution and the private saga of the former altar boys who accuse him of molestation.
Looking every bit his 78 years, Lyons sat in an empty 11th floor courtroom Friday morning. His hands crossed, his eyes downcast, Lyons waited to hear his sentence while listening to attorneys chatter about murder, torture and drug cases. Wearing blue slacks and a sports coat, he shuffled back and forth to the bathroom while waiting for his sentencing, but it was postponed until August when an official psychiatric evaluation can be submitted to complete the case.
Lyons was scheduled to be sentenced for molesting a boy in the church rectory for years between 1992 and 1995. He faces a year in jail, having pleaded guilty to four counts of molestation in a deal that spares him a trial and the specter of 14 years in prison if convicted by a jury.
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