DETROIT (MI)
Detroit News
Nov. 13, 2019
By Beth LeBlanc
After resigning from Holy Redeemer Parish in 2002, the Rev. Vincent DeLorenzo penned a letter to Burton parishioners admitting to “inappropriate sexual contact with a minor” in the 1980s.
The former Flint area priest was removed from ministry and moved to Florida a little less than six years later, free of charges because the statute of limitations barred prosecution.
More than 17 years later, DeLorenzo was arrested in the backyard of his Summerfield, Florida, home on remarkably similar allegations by the Michigan attorney general’s office.
On May 23, police collected the 80-year-old priest’s medicine and took him to the Marion County Sheriff’s Office, where he waived his Miranda rights and allowed police to search his phone, according to a Michigan State Police report obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
DeLorenzo is one of at least five priests charged this year with sexual misconduct in Michigan who had been reported by the state’s dioceses to police or prosecutors years before — in some cases multiple times by multiple victims. The other priests are the Revs. Neil Kalina, Jacob Vellian, Brian Stanley and Timothy Crowley.
But, in large part, charges earlier weren’t filed because the statute of limitations had run its course and barred prosecution, or because a victim was unwilling to file a police report,according to a Detroit News review of government documents.
Each of the priests charged by Nessel had been removed from ministry in Michigan by their dioceses based on the allegations months or years prior to being charged.
Some of the latest misconduct charges are possible due to new allegations or old victims who finally filed a police report. In others, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel used a legal provision to charge priests whom local prosecutors believed couldn’t be prosecuted due to the passage of time.
The state has “an obligation, a responsibility and the authority” to pursue justice in the clergy abuse investigation, Nessel said in a Tuesday statement.
“One of the most important things our office can do for crime victims — especially those victims who have suffered in silence and have been ignored for so long — is to honor them and their stories by aggressively continuing to pursue the investigation begun by my predecessor,” Nessel said.
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