MAINE
Bangor Daily News
By Judy Harrison, BDN Staff
Posted June 10, 2016
PORTLAND, Maine — A retired Catholic priest who was found not guilty in 1994 by a Washington County jury of sexually abusing a 13-year-old girl has been stripped by the Vatican of his ability to function as or to present himself as a priest, the Roman Catholic diocese of Portland announced Friday.
“The Holy See has dismissed Antonin R. Caron from the clerical state for a substantiated claim of sexual abuse of a minor,” the diocese said in a news release. “ The complaint was received from an individual in November of 2012 who reported that the sexual abuse occurred in the early 1980s.”
In the 1994 trial, according to a previously published report, Caron was accused of sexually assaulting the girl with a pencil and his hands on May 9, 1992, in the sacristy — a small, open room behind the altar — in St. James the Greater Catholic Church in Baileyville, where he was parish priest, moments before the start of a Saturday afternoon Mass.
The girl, who is not being identified, waited a year before reporting the incident to a teacher, who then notified authorities. Despite parishioners being seated only a few feet away from the room, there were no witnesses to corroborate the girl’s story.
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