MINNESOTA
Grand Forks Herald
By: Stephen J. Lee, Grand Forks Herald
The Catholic Diocese of Crookston, in its first official comment since news of the arrest of the Rev. Joseph Jeyapaul in India last week on Minnesota sexual assault charges, says it hopes he is returned for trial.
Monsignor David Baumgartner, who as vicar general of the diocese serves as the right-hand man to Bishop Michael Hoeppner, told the Herald this week, “The only way for this to be resolved is for him to be here, so we would like a resolution to it.”
Jeyapaul, 57, has been a fugitive for six years from criminal charges first filed in state district court in Roseau in 2006. He is charged with sexually assaulting a parish member in Greenbush, Minn., when she was 14 and 15 in 2004 and 2005. In 2007 the charges were amended to include similar counts involving a second girl who was 16 during the same period.
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