SANTA FE (NM)
Santa Fe New Mexican
January 28, 2020
By Phaedra Haywood
Jury selection is set to begin Wednesday in the trial of an ex-priest accused of raping a first grader at a parochial school in Santa Fe County in the late 1980s.
Marvin Archuleta’s criminal trial is the first to come out of state Attorney General Hector Balderas’ ongoing investigation into claims of child sex abuse in Roman Catholic churches throughout New Mexico.
The state intends to bring Thomas P. Doyle of Virginia, a national expert on clergy sex abuse, to testify in the case, according to a witness list.
Doyle — an attorney, victim’s advocate, columnist for the National Catholic Reporter and a former priest — is credited with being one of the first people within the church to speak out on child sexual abuse by the clergy.
The Attorney General’s Office charged Archuleta, 82, with criminal sexual penetration of a child under 13 and kidnapping in February 2018 after his accuser in the case — now an adult — told a special agent that Archuleta tied him up with a belt and raped him when he was 6 years old.
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