SEDALIA (MO)
Sedalia Democrat
January 12, 2019
By David Clohessy
This is a heartfelt appeal to Sedalia area Catholics and citizens who have information or suspicions about a priest who was expelled by mid-Missouri church officials and accused of sexually inappropriate actions with a girl.
While his church supervisors claim he’s no threat to kids, we are highly skeptical.
Following a familiar pattern in these cases, since the allegations against Fr. Deusdedit Mulokozi (or Fr. Deo, as he’s known) were reported to Sedalia law enforcement, he’s been moved three times.
First, he was sent to Kansas City, then to a Catholic treatment center in Texas and then to Tanzania where he is now working among the even more vulnerable people: unsuspecting Catholics in a developing nation with a less vigorous criminal system and an even more secretive church hierarchy.
To be fair, in our criminal justice system, everyone’s entitled to be presumed innocent. But to be honest and prudent, reasonable people should not assume Fr. Deo is innocent.
First, even Catholic officials admit that very few allegations of sexual misconduct against priests are false. A Boston-based research and archive group, BishopAccountability, says that fewer than 2 percent of sexual abuse allegations appear to be false. And a report commissioned by U.S. bishops and conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice concluded that 2.5 percent are false.
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