Removed New Orleans deacon George Brignac jailed — a major Catholic clergy abuse crisis development

NEW ORLEANS (LA)
The Advocate

Sept. 21, 2019

By Ramon Antonio Vargas

A Catholic Church deacon who was removed from ministry in 1988 following multiple child molestation accusations was jailed on a count of first-degree rape early Saturday, the first arrest of a clergyman in New Orleans on a sex-abuse charge since the church’s decades-old crisis reignited a little more than a year ago.

Details about what is just the latest criminal case against George Feldner Brignac, 84, weren’t immediately available. But records from the New Orleans Police Department and the city’s lockup show Brignac was booked in connection with a complaint made Aug. 28, 2018.

The address provided for that complaint is in the 3300 block of Esplanade Avenue, where Brignac worked as co-director of the altar boy program at Our Lady of the Rosary Parish in the 1970s and 1980s. He would face mandatory life imprisonment if convicted of first-degree rape, which has no statute of limitations — meaning prosecutors can try the case no matter how long ago the alleged crime occurred.

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