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  Accused Priest Faces New Sex Abuse Charges

By Clifford Ward
Chicago Tribune
April 21, 2010

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-0422-father-flores-20100421,0,4456356.story

A Catholic priest already accused of sexually abusing a west suburban boy faces more charges involving the youth and allegations that he attempted to abuse the youth's older brother.

A Kane County grand jury indicted the Rev. Alejandro Flores on nine new counts, State's Attorney John Barsanti announced Wednesday.

The charges include predatory criminal sexual assault, criminal sexual assault, aggravated criminal sexual abuse, indecent solicitation of a child and attempted aggravated criminal sexual abuse.

Flores, 37, already stood accused of seven felony counts alleging that he molested a St. Charles boy from 2005, when the boy was 8, until this year. The abuse took place while Flores, who is a Bolivian citizen, was a seminarian assigned to a West Chicago church and had become friendly with the boy's family, who were parishioners, authorities say.

The new counts allege that Flores made sexual advances toward the boy's older brother during a single incident sometime during the past five years when the brother was between the ages of 13 and 17, prosecutors said.

Following his ordination in 2009, Flores was assigned to a south suburban church. In January, just before his arrest, he attempted to kill himself by jumping from the balcony of a shuttered church in Joliet.

He was hospitalized for several days and was taken into custody after his release from the hospital. He is currently being held at the Kane County Jail in lieu of $1 million bail. Last month, a judge rejected a motion to reduce Flores' bail.

Flores' attorney, Glenn Sowa, said at the March hearing that the Joliet archdiocese was willing to pay for Flores to attend a Maryland treatment center for religious workers with psychological issues. It was in arguing against the reduced bond that prosecutors first brought up the allegations involving the victim's older brother.

 
 

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