By Walter O'brien and Michael Deak
Home News Tribune
September 5, 2008
http://www.mycentraljersey.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080905/NEWS/80905020
FLEMINGTON —The Rev. John Banko, 62, the former pastor of St. Edward the Confessor Church in Milford, was sentenced Friday morning to 18 years in prison for first-degree aggravated sexual assault and eight years for second-degree endangering the welfare of a child from 1994-95.
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| John Banko, former priest at St. Edward the Confessor Church in Milford |
Jurors convicted Banko on May 13. He was charged with the offenses in 2006.
The sentences will run concurrently and be added to the term Banko is already serving on a previous child sexual abuse conviction.
Banko is already serving a 15-year term at the Adult Diagnostic and Treatment Center in Avenel for his 2002 conviction of molesting a former altar boy from 1993-94.
A 23-year-old man testified in the trial that he was a boy when Banko, then pastor of St. Edward the Confessor, sexually abused him in a locked men's room at the church's parish center.
A former church custodian testified that the men's room door did not have a lock on it. Hunterdon County Assistant Prosecutor Dawn Solari argued that under the duress of abuse, the victim could have felt "locked in'' regardless of the literal presence of a lock.
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