CANADA
Vancouver Sun
BY JEFF BELL, TIMES COLONIST SEPTEMBER 4, 2013
Philip Jacobs has been given a five-month conditional sentence, followed by two years probation, for sexual touching of a teenage boy while serving as a Catholic priest at St. Joseph the Worker Church in Saanich.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Miriam Gropper chose today to impose the condtional term rather than up to six months in jail as requested by the Crown prosecutor.
Gropper found the 63-year-old Jacobs guilty in March while acquitting him on three other charges, including two counts of sexual touching and a count of sexual assault. She said it was clear to her that Jacobs acted deliberately when rubbing a youth’s leg up to the groin and that it was not something accidental or absent-minded as Jacobs maintained.
Gropper said the situation that led to the offence, which had Jacobs and the youth (who cannot be named) alone for a study session, was “an aspect of grooming” by Jacobs for touching in a sexual way.
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