CHILE
ABC News
AP
An Irish-born priest was found guilty on Wednesday of sexually abusing a minor while he was chaplain at a school in Chile’s capital.
A court in Santiago said that the Rev. John O’Reilly committed the abuse while he was the spiritual guide at the Cumbres school located in the affluent neighborhood of Las Condes.
The families of two sisters had accused the priest of molesting the pre-teen girls between 2007 and 2012. The court absolved him in one of the cases. His sentence will be announced on Nov. 11.
“The court has established … beyond all reasonable doubt the following facts: that O’Reilly decided to carry out actions of a sexual nature through body contact with a school student,” Judge Maria Teresa Barrientos, said adding that the priest committed the abuse several times in 2010 and 2012 during school hours.
O’Reilly, who arrived to Chile in the mid-1980s and was granted Chilean citizenship in 2008, is a member of the Legion of Christ. The once-respected conservative order fell into scandal after it revealed that its founder had fathered a child and had sexually abused seminarians.
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