KENTUCKY
SFGate
Dylan Lovan, Associated Press Tuesday, November 29, 2016
BRANDENBURG, Ky. (AP) — A Louisville priest was convicted Tuesday of sexually abusing a boy at a summer camp he used to run but was found not guilty on a second count of the same charge.
The Rev. Joseph Hemmerle was found guilty of one count of indecent or immoral practices with a child under 15. Jurors cleared him of the second count.
Jurors in the Meade County trial deliberated for two hours before returning the verdict, then began considering a sentence. Hemmerle faces up to 10 years in prison.
Hemmerle, 74, was charged with committing sexual abuse at his Catholic summer camp in the 1970s. He testified Tuesday that he would sometimes apply calamine lotion to the genitals of child campers, with their permission, but he denied abusing his accuser.
Hemmerle said from the witness stand that he never abused the alleged victim, Michael Norris. The county was the site of Camp Tall Trees, a summer camp Hemmerle ran for three decades beginning in the 1970s.
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