MINNESOTA
Star Tribune
By Jean Hopfensperger Star Tribune APRIL 19, 2016
Megan Peterson was astounded to learn that the Vatican had reinstated a priest from India who was convicted last year of sexually abusing a teenage girl in northern Minnesota.
She took her fight to remove that priest, the Rev. Paul Jeyapaul, to federal court Tuesday, filing a lawsuit to prevent him from “harming the children of India.”
Jeyapaul is among a handful of foreign Catholic priests to be successfully extradited to the United States to face charges of sexually abusing a minor. He pleaded guilty to criminal sexual conduct against a teenager at his Minnesota parish in 2015.
Peterson accused Jeyapaul of rape and sexual abuse in a civil suit that was settled out of court in 2011.
“This Pope has said that bishops who cover up [sexual abuse] and the offending clerics have no place in the church,” Peterson said at a news conference in St. Paul Tuesday. “I feel like this is a slap in the face.”
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