SARASOTA (FL)
WWSB -ABC 7 [Sarasota FL]
December 30, 2024
SARASOTA, Fla. (WWSB) – An arrest in April sent shockwaves throughout two communities that are separated by 1,400 miles.
An employee working at a Catholic district in Dubuque, Iowa, a town of about 60,000 people that borders both Wisconsin and Illinois, reported sexual abuse allegations from former altar boys to the Dubuque Police Department in May of 2023.
“They had somebody come and report to them what was going on and they brought it to our attention, which started the investigation,” says Luke Bock from the Dubuque Police Department.
That investigation led to 5 sexual abuse charges stemming from the 1980s being filed against Father Leo Riley, a priest who worked in Iowa until transferring to Florida in the early 2000s.
The Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office made the arrest at the priest’s home in Port Charlotte 11 months after the investigation started.
“A lot of the interviews that he conducted gave information that really spelled out the same story. It all went in the same direction, leading credibility to all those stories,” Bock said.
Then 2 days later at a law firm in Sarasota another story became public.
“He said that if I told, he would do to my sister what he was doing to me,” an alleged victim going by John Doe said.
He was the first to come forward with allegations of being sexually abused by Father Riley during his time on the Suncoast.
He says he tried to suppress the trauma allegedly caused by the priest while at St. Charles Borromeo in Port Charlotte.
“When they started coming back in flashes and nightmares I knew I needed to do something so that Riley would not hurt anyone else.”
Two and a half weeks after his arrest Riley made his first appearance in front of a judge on May 13th.
This got the ball rolling toward a potential trial.
“In every case that we prosecute, we seek the truth and seek to do justice,” said Josh Sims, the prosecuting attorney.
But Riley’s defense attorney Guy Cook said it would be unjust to put the priest behind bars.
“I’m here to tell you that he’s not only presumed innocent, he is innocent. That’s not me speaking, that’s the results of two polygraph examinations conducted by former FBI agents.”
But a trial in the criminal case would never come after a judge ruled the charges were brought too late and threw it out as it violated the statute of limitations.
But Riley’s legal issues were far from over.
The altar boys in Iowa pivoted to a lawsuit against the priest and decided to file it in Charlotte County because of Florida’s less restrictive statute of limitations.
This brought the total to 4 John Doe’s suing Riley, the first represented by Damian Mallard, who had a deposition with Father Riley in September.
“He denied having done anything to anybody that was inappropriate, which obviously our client feels is not true,” Mallard said.
The tangled web of allegations and denials that took us to several different courthouses in multiple states is still yet to fully unravel.
The alleged victims are currently stuck in a slow-moving legal process 40 years after they say they were first abused, while Father Riley is cloaked in litigation his defense says never should have been brought.
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