RICHMOND (VA)
News Channel 6
February 15, 2019
By Brendan King
Retired Prince George Police Lieutenant Bill King remembers the early 2000’s well – the time he helped convict a priest for sex crimes against a child.
The suspect was Rev. John P. Blankenship who was the chaplain at Petersburg Federal Correctional Center at the time he was indicted.
In February of 2003, he pleaded guilty to four separate counts of sodomizing a minor in Prince George County.
Rev. John Blankenship is a registered sex offender residing in the city of Richmond.
The abuse took place in 1982 at the Church of the Sacred Heart. The victim was 14 at the time.
Investigators said that Blankenship took advantage of the young teen while his mother cleaned the church.
King said Blankenship turned himself in alongside his lawyer at the police station.
“He was basically stoic because I’m sure his attorney had told him to be limited in what he said,” King recalled. “There we arrested and booked him.”
King said he was surprised that church officials claimed they did not know police were investigating Blankenship prior to his indictment.
“I had already been [to the Richmond Diocese] and told them who I was looking for. They gave me the information I needed on him to indict him,” he explained. “When I went there to get the information and was met by Father Apuzzo, he wasn’t surprised.”
In 2002, the Daily Press reported “diocesan officials say they were surprised to learn of the priest’s indictment or the county’s interest in the case.”
“We didn’t know that there was an investigation going on until this morning,” the Rev. Pasquale Apuzzo, spokesman for the diocese, told reporters at the time.
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