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	Group Wants More Action against Priest By Earl Kelly Capital December 7, 2007 http://www.hometownannapolis.com/cgi-bin/read/2007/12_07-51/TOP A group that advocates for victims of sexual abuse by priests this morning called on civilian authorities to pursue criminal charges locally against an HIV-positive Catholic priest who pleaded guilty yesterday to sexually abusing midshipmen in Annapolis and at the Naval Academy. At the same time, a former midshipman who was dismissed from the academy for being homosexual blamed the situation partly on military rules that force homosexuals to hide their actions. Lt. Cmdr. John Thomas Matthew Lee, 42, was a Catholic priest assigned to the Naval Academy form 2003 to 2006. He pleaded guilty at the Quantico Marine Corps Base yesterday to forceful sodomy and was sentenced to two years in military prison. "I am surprised that the attorney general of Maryland and the state's attorney of Anne Arundel County are not pursuing this case," said Frank Dingle of Baltimore spokesman for the local chapter of The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. "Nobody in Maryland who protects children has done anything." At yesterday's sentencing, Lee admitted to forcing himself on an academy midshipman and to coercing a Marine he was counseling to take nude photos of him. He also pleaded guilty to having sex with an Air Force officer without telling the officer he had the virus linked to AIDS. The former midshipman, now a Navy ensign who graduated from the academy last year, testified that Lee was counseling him when he visited Lee at his Annapolis apartment. The priest plied him with alcohol and performed oral sex on him, the then-20-year-old midshipman testified. Testifying at the sentencing, the former midshipman said he did not physically resist when Lee assaulted him because he was intimidated by Lee's status as a chaplain, but he did ask him to stop. "This was a priest. This was a guy who knew all of my darkest secrets," the victim said on the witness stand, according to the Associated Press. The midshipman testified he told Lee "I didn't want it. He said, 'It's all right, it's all right,"' and continued the assault. He also admitted to having sex with an Air Force lieutenant colonel at the colonel's home in Virginia. Lee met the colonel over the Internet, and lied when the colonel asked him about his HIV status. Under the plea agreement, Lee was sentenced to 12 years in prison, with 10 years of the sentence suspended providing he cooperate with authorities. Under the agreement, Lee must inform medical authorities within the next 30 days of all his sexual contacts since learning in 2005 that he has the AIDS virus. A spokesman for State's Attorney Frank R. Weathersbee said federal authorities never contacted local officials about the case, and she did not know if the federal agreement resolved all charges, or if additional state charges would be forthcoming. "We have not been contacted by victims or authorities," said spokesman Kristin Riggin. When asked if an investigation still might be launched, she said, "We don't discuss investigations." When asked about the case, Naval Academy spokesman Deborah Goode would say only, "The Academy respects the court's decision in the case of Lt. Cmdr. John Thomas Matthew Lee." A gay-rights advocate who was dismissed from the academy for being homosexual said he blames the federal policy commonly called "Don't ask, don't tell," under which gays may serve in the military, so long as they don't disclose their sexuality. "'Don't ask, don't tell' forces you to be duplicitous," said Rev. Tommie Watkins Jr., who was president of the Naval Academy Class of 1998. "The priest had to adopt a life of not being honest." Rev. Watkins was at the academy until, he said, he was forced to resign in May 1997, after admitting he was sexually attracted to another male midshipman, even though the two never had sex. Now a graduate student at the University of Alabama, Rev. Watkins, 32, was ordained in the Baptist church when he was 16. Since being dismissed from the academy he has graduated from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and earned a commercial pilot's license. "The real issue is what extent the system contributed," Rev. Watkins said of the Lee case. In addition to forcible sodomy, Lee pleaded guilty to consensual sodomy, violating a lawful order, committing an indecent act, fraternization and conduct unbecoming an officer. Lee's voice occasionally broke when military judge Marine Col. Steve F. Day asked him to explain his conduct, sometimes in detail. Lee admitted he knew his senior rank could prove intimidating to the people he was pressuring for sex. "I asked him numerous times and told him it would be just this one time, and that I was the lieutenant commander and he was the corporal," Lee said of his efforts to persuade the corporal to take pornographic pictures of him. Lee, who listed his hometown as Phoenixville, Pa., was commissioned an officer in 1988 and was ordained as a priest in 1993. He began serving as a military chaplain in 1996, but his faculties to function as a priest were revoked in June, after an accuser came forward, according to the Associated Press. He was taken to the brig in handcuffs and leg irons after yesterday's hearing. Col. Day, the judge who presided over the case, was the trial judge in the recent case of a Navy doctor who was convicted by a military jury of secretly filming midshipmen who had sex while guests at his house. The jury sentenced Kevin J. Ronan, a commander with 16 years in the Navy, to 46 months in the brig.
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