A Texas priest has been sentenced to 10 years in prison after being accused of sexually abusing children decades ago. Father Manuel La Rosa-Lopez pleaded guilty to two counts of indecency with a child early Tuesday morning. He was initially charged with five counts of indecency with a child involving sexual contact but opted for a plea deal rather than going to trial.
According to his attorney, Wendall Odom Jr., La Rosa-Lopez pleaded guilty to accept responsibility for his actions.
“He wants to accept responsibility for what happened and wants to get on with his life. But also, the civil suits have been settled at this point. We are getting closer to trial after a lot of consultation; he’s decided that this is what he wants to do,” Odom Jr. said.
His guilty plea was a part of a plea deal that will put him behind bars for a decade and make him a registered sex offender for the remainder of his life. Before offering the agreement to the former priest, Nancy Herber, lead prosecutor with Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office, said the victims were consulted with.
“Their biggest concern is that the defendant was not around children ever again. They were also very concerned that he’d be registered as a sex offender. So, they were very relieved to not have to come to court and face him and testify, although they were ready to do so,” Heber said.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, La Rosa-Lopez was accused of abusing a young girl and boy while he was a priest at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Conroe, Texas. Decades later, a third person came forward and reported that the former priest sexually abused him when he was an altar boy in the mid-‘90s.
La Rosa-Lopez victims were between the ages of 13 and 16 at the time of the assault. When the abuse occurred, each victim told police that they informed church officials that they were being abused, but the information was never passed on to authorizes, reports say.
Instead, La Rosa-Lopez was sent to the Shalom Center in Houston for treatment before being assigned to St. John Fisher Church in Richmond, Texas, by the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston. He remained there until he turned himself in to the Montgomery County Jail in September 2018.
The victims have filed a $20 million civil lawsuit due to the Archdiocese and the Vatican’s failure to protect them.
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