NEW JERSEY
NJ.com
By Mark Mueller | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
A former Union County priest who admitted to NJ Advance Media last year he sexually assaulted a 15-year-old boy was indicted by a grand jury Wednesday in connection with the attack.
Manuel Gallo Espinoza, 52, fled to his native Ecuador in 2003 after his victim told another priest and a nun that the clergyman raped him in the rectory of a Plainfield church that year.
A criminal investigation at the time quickly went dormant. The investigation was reopened after NJ Advance Media highlighted the victim’s case in a lengthy report in July 2015.
Weeks later, Gallo Espinoza admitted in a telephone interview and in email exchanges with a reporter that he carried out the attack, calling it a “mistake” and blaming his victim for enticing him.
“One thing that I am conscious (of) is he was at that time a teenager, and it is a big mistake for me. But I didn’t force him to do anything he didn’t want,” Gallo Espinoza wrote. “He was older (sic) enough to walk away, but I think that I was attracted to him, that is the only explanation that I can think right now.”
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