Jury recommends 7 year sentence for priest convicted of sex abuse

KENTUCKY
WHAS

BRANDENBURG, Ky. (AP) — A jury has recommended a seven-year sentence for a Louisville priest convicted of sexual abuse.

The Rev. Joseph Hemmerle was convicted Tuesday of indecent or immoral practices with a child under 15 at his Catholic summer camp in the 1970s.

The 74-year-old priest testified Tuesday during a trial in Meade County that he would occasionally apply calamine lotion to the genitals of child campers, with their permission. But he testified that he never abused the alleged victim, Michael Norris.

Norris said when he was 10 years old, Hemmerle stood him on a stool with no clothes and sexually abused him in Hemmerle’s personal cabin.

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