Caught
In 1990, Frank Fitzpatrick went public with accusations that Porter had molested him as a child in the '60s. Over the next two years, Fitzpatrick contacted the state police, the FBI, and the media, resulting in over 200 people coming forward and leveling charges of abuse against Porter. A 1992 segment on Porter's crimes on the ABC TV news magazine Primetime Live, hosted by Diane Sawyer, sparked national attention. Porter was arrested, tried and convicted of sexually abusing his children's babysitter in 1984. He served four months of a six-month prison sentence before his conviction was overturned by the Minnesota Supreme Court.
By 1993, dozens of lawsuits had cropped up against Porter in Minnesota, Texas and New Mexico; in Minnesota alone, he was charged with over 200 counts of sexual abuse. Porter's lawyer struck a plea bargain, and Porter was sentenced to 18–20 years in prison, with possibility of parole, with counseling, after six years. Parole was consistently denied.
Read more about this topic: James Porter (Catholic Priest)
Famous quotes containing the word caught:
“Perhaps the most embarrassing experience is being caught at a lie by a simpleton who sneers at our asinine cleverness.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“Our young people are diseased with the theological problems of original sin, origin of evil, predestination, and the like. These never presented a practical difficulty to any man,—never darkened across any man’s road, who did not go out of his way to seek them. These are the soul’s mumps, and measles, and whooping- coughs, and those who have not caught them cannot describe their health or prescribe a cure. A simple mind will not know these enemies.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Much verse fails of being poetry because it was not written exactly at the right crisis, though it may have been inconceivably near to it. It is only by a miracle that poetry is written at all. It is not recoverable thought, but a hue caught from a vaster receding thought.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)