Former Delaware Cath­olic school teacher on trial for child sex abuse

WILMINGTON (DE)
PressReader [Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada]

October 21, 2026

By Xer­xes Wilson

Trial testi­mony began Oct. 19 in the case of a former Wilm­ing­ton Cath­olic school teacher accused of rap­ing a stu­dent in the ‘90s.

Chris­topher Crisona is a former teacher of the now-defunct St. Thomas the Apostle School in Wilm­ing­ton. He is charged with mul­tiple felon­ies tied to claims that he repeatedly raped a stu­dent at the school in the ‘90s.

Open­ing state­ments pre­viewed a trial that will focus both on the dec­ades-old recol­lec­tions of the vic­tim while the defense will seek to dis­credit those memor­ies by delving into the sci­ence of repressed memor­ies and the vic­tims’ thera­peutic care through the years.

Crisona was charged along­side John Tag­gart, a former priest at the school who also faces mul­tiple sex abuse felon­ies. Tag­gart’s trial is sched­uled for Janu­ary. St. Thomas the Apostle School, formerly loc­ated in the 200 block of Bayard Ave., closed in 2008 after 105 years.

Trial testi­mony on the first day indic­ated that invest­ig­at­ors believe Crisona raped the vic­tim at the school, another nearby Cath­olic School, Con­cord Mall and an apart­ment com­plex in New Castle County.

In open­ing state­ments to the jury, Deputy Attor­ney Gen­eral Nich­olas Wynn told jur­ors that much of the case will be based on testi­mony and opin­ions. He emphas­ized that the crimes Crisona is accused of occurred three dec­ades ago so there is no DNA or other phys­ical evid­ence. The defense also emphas­ized there will be no con­tem­por­an­eous evid­ence from the time.

So the testi­mony of the vic­tim will be the primary evid­ence and the open­ing state­ments by pro­sec­utors and defense attor­neys indic­ated much of the rest of testi­mony will be focused on the vic­tim’s cred­ib­il­ity through the state­ments and prac­tices of the vic­tims’ ther­ap­ists and also an expert in memory called by the defense.

Penny O’Con­nell, an attor­ney rep­res­ent­ing Crisona, told jur­ors that con­fid­ence and emo­tion do not estab­lish accur­acy.

“A belief about the past is not proof of the past,” O’Con­nell said.

She said the defense will call an expert on memory to tell the jury how memor­ies can be dis­tor­ted and to show the vic­tim recovered memor­ies of abuse through psy­cho­ther­apy that was “inher­ently sug­gest­ive” and poten­tially “coer­cive.”

The trial is sched­uled to last through this week.