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  DA Working on Plea That Would Put Desilets in Jail

By Sara Withee
MetroWest Daily News [Worcester MA]
April 26, 2005

WORCESTER -- The Rev. Paul Desilets made his long-awaited court appearance via video conference yesterday as Worcester District Attorney John Conte announced his office is working on a plea deal that likely will include time behind bars.

"We're going to be asking for jail time," Conte told reporters outside the Worcester Superior courtroom where the ailing 81-year-old Catholic priest was ordered held on $100,000 cash bail.

After three years of fighting extradition in Canada, the retired priest returned to the United States Friday to face charges he allegedly abused 18 former altar boys at the now-closed Our Lady of Assumption parish in Bellingham during the 1970s and '80s.

Desilets had been scheduled to attend his arraignment in person, but Conte and Worcester County sheriff officials said court officials kept him at the Worcester House of Correction due to safety concerns.

Joseph Druce, the inmate charged with killing defrocked priest John Geoghan at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in 2003, was in court yesterday for motion hearings.

Appearing by video, Desilets sat silently during his arraignment, allowing attorney Dennis Kelly to enter his not guilty pleas. He faces 32 criminal charges, including 10 charges of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14, 16 charges of indecent assault and battery on a person 14 or older and six counts of assault and battery.

Judge Timothy S. Hillman imposed the $100,000 cash bail at the request of Assistant District Attorney Jeffrey Travers. Kelly and Desilets' other counsel, attorney Paul Mastrocola, withheld their arguments until a May 13 hearing.

Two victims attended the arraignment but quickly left the courtroom accompanied by Travers and chose not to address reporters.

Conte said each victim faces a challenge, and his office kept pushing for extradition so they could move on.

"This office in this particular case was victim-driven," he said. "We felt we had to bring closure to this case. And I think this is the closure aspect of this case."

The prosecutor said his office is determining what kind of plea victims will find acceptable. "Thus far we have consulted with approximately nine (of the 18 victims), and most of the victims are in agreement with what we are about to do," Conte said.

Conte would not elaborate on plea discussions, and one of Desilets' attorneys declined all comment after the arraignment.

But one clergy abuse victims group yesterday praised law enforcement efforts to bring Desilets back to the United States, saying he is an exception to the many clergy members who have escaped prosecution because of the state's statutes of limitations on sex crimes.

"They've gotten off for years and years because they could count on their victims being silent while the statute of limitations passed, meanwhile, leaving them free to strike again," said Ann Hagan Webb of Wellesley, New England co-coordinator of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

Desilets was subject to charges because he returned to Canada and stopped the clock on the statute. Hagan Webb's group is lobbying state legislators to lift the limits -- six years for indecent assault and batteries and 15 years for rapes.

Hagan Webb said age and medical condition shouldn't impede any clergy sex abuse case.

"It doesn't mean because you're in your 70s, you're no longer a threat to children," she said. "Once a pedophile, always a pedophile. Unless you're given really strong treatment, which I don't think many of them have."