McDonnell Living With Priest Who Pleaded Guilty To Sex Crime

VIRGINIA
Talking Points Memo

By CATHERINE THOMPSON
Published AUGUST 26, 2014

Virginia ex-Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) revealed during testimony last week that he moved out of his family home and in with his parish priest the week before his federal corruption trial began.

McDonnell explained on the stand that living separately from his wife Maureen would make it easier for him to prepare for trial each day and described their marriage as “on hold.” The priest he is staying with or the time being, Rev. Wayne Ball of St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Richmond, Va., is a family friend who officiated his daughter Cailin’s wedding.

Ball also pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor sex charge in late 2002.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported at the time that Ball, then pastor of Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Norfolk, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of frequenting a bawdy place. Other media reports defined that as a place used for “lewdness, assignation or prostitution.” Norfolk police had arrested Ball and another Richmond man the night before Thanksgiving when they were found together in a parked car in a local park.

The charge was dismissed in 2003 after Ball fulfilled the terms of his plea agreement.

McDonnell railed against sex outside of marriage in his now-infamous master’s thesis, making his friendship with Ball and his decision to move into the rectory at St. Patrick’s during the trial all the more interesting. In the paper, written for Regents University in 1989, McDonnell deplored “the perverted notion of liberty that each individual should be able to live out his sexual life in any way he chooses without interference from the state,” going on to blast gays and unwed mothers.

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