NEW JERSEY
Asbury Park Press
Kathleen Hopkins, @Khopkinsapp October 15, 2014
TOMS RIVER – Jurors deliberating molestation charges against a popular Brick priest just reviewed a videotape of the clergyman acknowledging that he touched a 5-year-old girl, her 13-year-old brother and the children’s mother.
On the videotape, about one hour and 15 minutes long, Marukudiyil Velan, better known to parishioners at Church of the Visitation in Brick as “Father Chris,’’ readily admits he touched the mother’s breast on the date in question, July 13, 2012, and that he had done so in the past in the process of hugging her.
Regarding the children, Velan, 66, said he was resisting their inappropriate moves when he touched them.
He denied, however, touching the boy inappropriately on a previous occasion in April 2012, when the pair were in his car en route to McDonald’s.
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