By Neil McLeod
The News of the World
October 12, 2003

A former choirboy flew 5,000 miles to confront the pervert priest who abused him-after spending years hunting him down.

John -- not his real name -- turned up with his wife at the doorstep of Father James Robinson's Los Angeles home.

The runaway Roman Catholic cleric, who was clearly startled, tried to bluster his way out of angry accusations by John, 34.

But Robinson's squirming was captured by a crew from BBC TV's Kenyon Confronts who travelled from the UK with John.

Raged

John, abused by the priest as a ten-year-old, raged: "You came into the family, they trusted you with me."

Robinson replies: "Yes because I liked you very much and also I helped you."

John: "How can you say that was any sort of looking after me? That was for yourself."

Robinson: "No".

John: "What you did to me. You don't think deserves an apology?"

Robinson: "I've done nothing worth apologising for. Now excuse me please and get off my property, OK." The priest, in his late 50s, vanished from Britain amid a string of allegations of abusing boys in Birmingham. The former boxer ran a string of clubs in the 1970s.

John said after the confrontation in a rundown trailer park: "He preyed on people in a vulnerable position, utilising his power, his place in the society. But to do that to a child -- how that man has hurt me and others. And the fact that he was a priest -- it's just impossible to put into words."

British police want to quiz Robinson, who suddenly quit his post in 1986 for the US -- with references from the church in his pocket.

Stopped

He was allowed to work in five churches in Los Angeles, including one attached to a school, before he was finally stopped from being a priest in 1993.

A year before he left the UK he met another former victim, Mark -- again not his real name -- in a park. Mark, now 24, hid a tape recorder in a bid to snare the beast.

Robinson was led on to the subject of abusing Mark and snivelled: "You know in my heart I hated it."

* Kenyon Confronts: Secrets And Confessions on BBC I this Wednesday at 7.30pm.