CANADA
Sooke News Mirror
By Edward Hill – Saanich News
Published: December 14, 2012
A one-time friend of Phillip Jacobs testified on Thursday that the former Saanich priest touched him inappropriately a number of times during tutoring sessions.
The witness, now a young man and one of three complainants against Jacobs, appeared in Victoria Supreme Court and described incidents that at first seemed an odd but absent-minded wandering of a priest’s hand, but deemed later in life as inappropriate sexual touching.
Jacobs, 63, is a former parish priest of St. Joseph the Worker church on Burnside Road West, which has an associated Catholic elementary school on the grounds.
Jacobs is charged with sexual assault, two counts of sexual interference of a person under 14 and touching a young person for a sexual purpose. The charges involve three minors under the age of 14, with alleged incidents spanning September 1996 to June 2001, all within Saanich. Jacobs was arrested Aug. 4, 2010 and released on bail
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