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  Arrest Came 2 Years after Ordination

By Stephen Buttry
Omaha World Herald (Nebraska)
April 14, 2002

Paul Margand served three years in prison in Nebraska after pleading no contest to a felony charge of sexual contact with a child.

He originally was charged with two counts of sexual contact and one of false imprisonment, because he held a boy in the church rectory against his will.

Lancaster County District Judge Donald Endacott declared him a mentally disordered sex offender and sentenced him on Feb. 10, 1988, to 20 months to five years.

His arrest in June 1987 came barely two years after he was ordained, on May 25, 1985. He was scheduled for a transfer from St. Teresa Catholic Church in Lincoln to Church of the Holy Spirit in Plattsmouth, Neb.

Prison psychiatrists diagnosed Margand as a pedophile with "obsessive-compulsive personality disorder with paranoid and schizoid features."

Court records show that he did not respond to treatment at the Lincoln Regional Center. "Mr. Margand continues to portray himself as unique and prefers to set his own course in the treatment program," one report said. He was transferred to the Lincoln Correctional Center in 1990 and released Jan. 9, 1991.

Little is known of what he has done since his release. He is not listed as a priest in the current national Catholic Directory.

He had an address in David City, Neb., in the early 1990s, then an address in Bel Air, Md.

Margand, who was 30 when arrested, is now 44 and a graduate student in criminal justice at Temple University in Philadelphia.

Fellow criminal justice students, speaking on the condition of anonymity, described him as somewhat of an eccentric. They said he almost always wears a button celebrating the virtues of Jesus Christ.

Margand did not respond to e-mail or telephone messages or messages left with Temple faculty or students asking for an interview. A Temple source confirmed that he had received a message.

 
 

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