CALIFORNIA
Merced Sun-Star
Published: July 6, 2013
By Andy Furillo — afurillo@sacbee.com
Grudgingly, one of the nation’s leading critics of the Catholic Church’s handling of sexual abuse by priests credited the Sacramento Diocese with doing some things right in the prosecution of the Rev. Uriel Ojeda.
The 33-year-old priest pleaded no contest Friday to a single count of molesting a 13-year-old girl and admitted to engaging in “substantial sexual conduct” with her, which will likely bring him eight years in state prison.
David Clohessy, the St. Louis-based director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said Sacramento church officials did “the bare minimum” to make sure a case was filed against Ojeda after the victim’s father first made accusations against the cleric two years ago.
“Tragically, because for decades bishops refused to do even that, then by comparison, it makes Sacramento church officials look better,” Clohessy said. “On the one hand, I think it’s important to acknowledge progress where progress really happens. But by the same token, it’s hard to define doing the bare minimum in child sex cases as real progress.”
Clohessy said Bishop Jaime Soto also should have cracked down on the dozens of Ojeda supporters who packed courtrooms and danced and chanted outside the jail after the priest’s Nov. 30, 2011, arrest. He said the church should have done more to publicize Ojeda’s misdeed and to shake the trees in the parishes where the reverend worked to find other potential victims.
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