ST. LOUIS (MO)
St. Louis Public Radio
By RACHEL LIPPMANN
St. Louis prosecutors have dropped criminal charges against a priest in the St. Louis Archdiocese accused of abusing a student at St. Louis the King School.
Father Xihui “Joseph” Jiang was charged in 2014 with two counts of sodomy for allegedly assaulting the boy in a bathroom at the school, near the Cathedral Basilica in the Central West End. A judge was scheduled to rule on Thursday whether prosecutors could use statements that the victim, identified in court documents only as A.M., made to investigators at the Children’s Advocacy Center.
(St. Louis Public Radio has redacted Father Jiang’s address and Social Security number from the charging documents linked above. No other changes have been made.)
But prosecutors on Tuesday dismissed the charges “for the reason that the state is unable to proceed at this time,” the circuit attorney’s office said in a statement. “The statute of limitations in this case does not run out for another 35 years. The office remains hopeful that charges will be refiled in the future. For this reason, we are unable to provide any additional information or discuss the case further.”
“It’s about time,” said Paul D’Agrosa, Jiang’s attorney. “This case should never have been brought to begin with. It was a false allegation from the beginning.”
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