A former Roman Catholic priest who fled to Morocco before he was returned to the United States and convicted of sexually abusing an altar boy in New Mexico in the 1990s was sentenced on Friday to 30 years in prison, prosecutors said.

Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, holds a sign during the protest outside the venue of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) general assembly in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S., November 12, 2018. PHOTO: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

US District Judge Martha Vazquez imposed the sentence in Albuquerque federal court on Arthur Perrault, 81, a onetime Air Force chaplain and colonel, US Attorney John Anderson said in a statement.

“There are few acts more horrific than the long-term sexual abuse of a child,” Anderson said. “At long last, today’s sentence holds Perrault accountable for his deplorable conduct.”

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Perrault’s trial attorney, Samuel Winder, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Perrault was convicted by a federal jury in April on six counts of aggravated sexual abuse and one count of abusive sexual contact with a minor in 1991 and 1992 at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque and at the Santa Fe National Cemetery, prosecutors said.

Source: Reuters

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