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:
“Without being bound to the fulfillment of promises, we would never be able to keep our identities; we would be condemned to wander helplessly and without direction in the darkness of each man’s lonely heart, caught in its contradictions and equivocalities—a darkness which only the light shed over the public realm through the presence of others, who confirm the identity between the one who promises and the one who fulfills, can dispel.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour,
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping.”
—Rupert Brooke (1887–1915)
“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)