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  Trial Set for Next Week in Clergy Abuse Case

Associated Press, carried in Monterey Herald [Los Angeles CA]
May 31, 2005

LOS ANGELES - A retired Roman Catholic priest will stand trial next week for allegedly molesting a boy in the 1990s.

Jury selection is scheduled to begin June 9 in the case against Michael Wempe, who faces three counts of committing a lewd act on a child and one count of oral copulation of a person under 16.

The current case stems from charges filed in September, months after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling voided 42 other sexual abuse allegations against Wempe. The alleged victim, now in his mid-20s, is the brother of two previous alleged victims.

Wempe, who is free on bond, was first charged with molesting five boys across Southern California between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s. The charges were thrown out when the nation's high court struck down a California law that erased the statute of limitations on sexual abuse cases from 1988 and earlier.