DANBURY (CT)
News-Times [Norwalk CT]
December 17, 2024
By Kendra Baker
A former priest accused of sexually assaulting one boy and groping another recently was granted a sentence modification, allowing him to return to his home country of Colombia.
Jaime Marin-Cardona, 56, appeared last week at state Superior Court in Danbury, where the disposition in his case was changed to a suspended nine-year prison sentence plus 45 months of conditional discharge.
Marin-Cardona originally was charged with — and pleaded not guilty to — three counts of fourth-degree sexual assault, three counts of risk of injury to a child and three counts of illegal sexual contact after turning himself in to Danbury police on a warrant in January 2020.
The warrant alleged that he groomed two boys over the course of four years, and sexually abused one of them over the same period of time. The abuse allegedly began in 2014 — the same year Marin-Cardona became a priest at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church on Golden Hill Road in Danbury.
Marin-Cardona was placed on administrative leave in December 2019, after the Diocese of Bridgeport’s Sexual Misconduct Review Board learned that the state Department of Children and Families had substantiated allegations of abuse against him. According to the Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport, Marin-Cardona’s last service had been at Saint Mary Parish in Bridgeport.
More than two years after his arrest, Marin-Cardona was sentenced in October 2022 to 10 years imprisonment, suspended after one year, plus five years probation after pleading guilty to one count of risk of injury to child and one count of fourth-degree sexual assault.
After serving one year behind bars, he returned to court for a Dec. 9 hearing on a sentence modification request, which Judge Charles Stango ultimately granted.
It was noted in court that there had been a number of discussions prior to the hearing about potentially allowing Marin-Cardona to go to Colombia upon his release from prison, and how it could work.
“There was an agreement, in spirit, as to what we would be seeking once Mr. Marin-Cardona completed the year-long incarceration part of his sentence (but) we hadn’t figured out at the time how we would effectuate it,” Marin-Cardona’s attorney, John Gulash, said in court.
While “there was never a concrete answer as to how that would be done,” Assistant State’s Attorney Mary-Caitlin Harding said it did seem “the only way to effectuate that would be through a conditional discharge.”
Harding said the Danbury State’s Attorney’s Office did not consent to the idea, but did recognize that it had been “part of the discussion” agreed to by parties in Marin-Cardona’s case in order to avoid a trial.
In light of all discussions on the matter, Stango said replacing the five years of probation to which Marin-Cardona previously was sentenced with 45 months conditional discharge would best “effectuate what Mr. Marin-Cardona wants and the spirit of the agreement” in his case.
Gulash told the court Marin-Cardona plans to move to Colombia permanently and understands that he would be required to register as a sex offender if he were to return in fewer than 10 years.
Other conditions of Marin-Cardona’s modified sentence, according to Stango, include no new arrests and no interactions with children under the age of 16.