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  Fugitive Priest Hid in Malaysia

By Bruce Jacques
The Asian Pacific Post [Maylasia]
April 20, 2006

http://www.asianpacificpost.com/portal2/ff8080810ab8664c010ab9de8e3b0105_Fugitive_priest.do.html

A defrocked American priest wanted on sex charges was hiding out in Malaysia before he was busted trying to reenter the United States via the B.C. border.

Bruce Jacques, 57, who was also a teacher has been arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court for allegedly sexually molesting a teenage student last year.

Assistant District Attorney Kerry O'Connell said Jacques was returned to New York after he was caught earlier this trying to sneak into the United States from British Columbia on Canada's west coast.

She said he spent most of his time as a fugitive in Malaysia.

O'Connell said investigators knew Jacques was in Malaysia because he frequently used his Internet e-mail account and they were able to track him.

The charge against Jacques, a former Episcopalian priest, is related to a sexual act he allegedly performed on a Robert Louis Stevenson School student in New York's Central Park on Oct 20, 2005, O'Connell told the court.

The prosecutor said the defendant had previously molested the 16-year-old youth inside the West 74th Street school, but that day told the teen to meet him in the park.

Meanwhile, the boy told a teacher what was going on, and the teacher followed them.

The teacher lost the two in Central Park, but back at the school the teacher and the headmaster confronted Jacques and "he was summarily fired" that day, O'Connell said.

By the time police were contacted, Jacques had fled, he said.

The student's parents, meanwhile, filed a lawsuit in Brooklyn's state Supreme Court against the defrocked priest, the headmaster who hired him and the school.

The suit charges the defendants with negligence and recklessness in hiring Jacques.

 
 

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