UNITED KINGDOM
Manchester Evening News
BY KIM PILLING
A Catholic priest who was accused of sexually abusing nine girls and one boy has been cleared by a jury.
Father Mortimer Stanley, 82, had denied a string of indecent assaults said to have been committed in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, between the late 1970s and 2002.
The Crown alleged the Limerick-born priest targeted most of the complainants, aged under 11, in his presbytery at St Vincent de Paul RC Church in Norden, when he would sit them on his knee.
Fr Stanley, from Ballybunion, County Kerry, said children would often climb on his knee of their own accord but nothing inappropriate ever happened.
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