SOMERVILLE (MA)
Patch
By Chris Orchard
A “pastoral response team” met with parishioners at Saint James Episcopal Church in Somerville Sunday to help the congregation confront news that one of the church’s former priests was arrested and accused of sexually assaulting a child there in the 1990s and 2000s, according to Tracy Sukraw, communications director for the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts.
Paul A. LaCharite, 65, of Boston, was arrested Friday and arraigned Monday in Somerville District Court on charges of assault to rape a child and indecent assault and battery on a child under the age of 14, according to the Middlesex District Attorney’s office.
According to the district attorney’s office, LaCharite is accused of sexually assaulting a young member of the congregation, who’s now an adult, over the course of about a decade beginning in the 1990s.
LaCharite served as priest of Saint James, in Teele Square, from 1989 to 2005, according to Sukraw. He retired from the priesthood in 2005 but in recent years served as a priest associate in the famous Old North Church in Boston’s North End. Priest associates play a limited role in the congregations and do things like help out with services, Sukraw said.
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