Accused Priest, Jeyapaul, in Custody in India

Crookston Daily Times
March 19, 2012

http://www.crookstontimes.com/news/x299888965/Accused-priest-Jeyapaul-in-custody-in-India

Rev. Joseph Jeyapaul

A Catholic priest accused of sexually assaulting one and possibly two underage girls in Greenbush while assigned to the Diocese of Crookston in 2004 has been arrested in India, where he had been preaching since 2006 and considered a fugitive. The Associated Press reports that the Rev. Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul, 57, appeared in court today, Monday. He will be held in custody pending a formal U.S. request for his extradition, to be filed along with case evidence, government officials said. It could take up to three months to process the extradition request.

Police detained Jeyapaul on?Friday, March 16 near the southern Indian town of Erode after Interpol issued an alert, according to police Subinspector Pugal Maran.

Jeyapaul was one of many foreign priests brought to the United States to help fill shortages in American parishes.

"We are grateful to the police and prosecutors in Minnesota and elsewhere for getting this dangerous cleric behind bars. But most of all, we are grateful to Jeyapaul’s victim, for having the courage to report to secular authorities and the compassion to cooperate with them so that this arrest could be made and so that children might be spared unspeakable pain," said Barbara Dorris, outreach director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP).

Jeyapaul, an Indian citizen, returned to India in 2005 to visit his ailing mother, and was asked not to return to the Minnesota church after being accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a 16 year old. The criminal case involving the 14 year old was filed later. Jeyapaul never returned to the United States.

Vatican officials recommened Jeyapaul’s removal from the priesthood, but the local Indian bishop instead sentenced him to a year in a monastery through a canonical trial.

Last fall, the Crookston Diocese, as part of a settlement of a lawsuit filed by a alleged victim who said Jeyapaul raped her when she was 14, agreed to pay $750,000. The victim said the attacks occurred when Jeyapaul was a parish priest at the Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Greenbush.

He has denied the allegations and has been in active ministry in India.