Sex Charges Dropped against Former East Windsor Priest

By Alex Wood
Journal Inquirer
November 19, 2015

http://www.journalinquirer.com/crime_and_courts/sex-charges-dropped-against-former-east-windsor-priest/article_7de4c3bc-8ed9-11e5-b35a-bb8ea3f053a5.html

The former pastor of East Windsor’s two Roman Catholic churches who was accused of sexually assaulting a teenage parishioner was convicted Wednesday of a sharply reduced charge in a plea bargain and received a sentence without immediate prison time, court records show.

The Rev. Paul A. Gotta — who had been administrator of St. Philip Church on South Main Street and St. Catherine Church on Windsorville Road — was convicted in the Hartford Superior Court plea deal of a single misdemeanor count of second-degree breach of peace. The conviction was under a subsection of the breach-of-peace statute that deals with assaulting or striking another person.

Gotta, who is in his late 50s and had lived with his sister in Bridgeport while facing federal and state criminal charges, received a six-month suspended sentence and a two-year “conditional discharge.”