NEW JERSEY
NJ.com
By Mark Mueller | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
on January 07, 2016
An arrest warrant has been issued for a suspended New Jersey priest who admitted to a reporter in August that he engaged in a sexual encounter with a teenage boy 13 years ago.
Union County’s presiding municipal court judge, Joan Robinson Gross, issued the warrant for the Rev. Manuel Gallo Espinoza Thursday afternoon, one day after the alleged victim in the case filed a sexual assault complaint in Plainfield Municipal Court.
The Rev. Manuel Gallo Espinoza, seen in social media photos (top), fled the country in 2003 after a 15-year-old boy accused him of rape. At bottom is a copy of the visa he received when he returned to the United States to work as a teacher.
The accuser, Max Rojas Ramirez, contends Gallo Espinoza raped him in the rectory of a Plainfield church just before Easter in 2003, when he was 15. The priest, who was removed from ministry by the Archdiocese of Newark after the accusation was made, then fled to his native Ecuador.
It’s not known where Gallo Espinoza is living now. In June of last year, NJ Advance Media disclosed he had returned to the United States to work as a teacher in Maryland and Virginia before disappearing in 2014.
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