Fr. McGuire sentenced
Rev. Donald McGuire SJ has been sentenced to seven years in prison. This is being delayed during his appeal, because of his age, 76, and his health. His 20 years probation, the other part of his sentence, starts immediately. During this time, when not in prison, he is to stay at a nursing home. He is to register as a sex offender.
"You can very well think I'm guilty because I chose to say nothing in my defense. But your honor you are looking at an innocent man,”
he told the Walworth County, Wisconsin, judge who sentenced him.
Later: He is to "stay confined to his Jesuit home in Waukegan and have no contact with minors or the two men he was convicted of molesting," Chi Trib reports. (Italics added: He's gone from the Jesuit Hyde Park residence, where he'd been living, and this Jesuit home in Waukegan is a new one. There is a Jesuit-inspired Cristo Rey-network high school in Waukegan, however.)
Also: McGuire "came to court in a wheelchair," reports Trib. The two accusers said he "repeatedly molested them when they lived with him in his room at Loyola," which was not part of the Wisconsin charge and would not have survived in Illinois because of statute limitation.
The prosecutor called his crimes "incredibly grave." The two accusers spoke against McGuire, four others spoke for him. They included
Cheryl Ward-Kaiser, who said McGuire has been her retreat master for nearly 20 years, told the judge of the friendship and counseling McGuire has given her in troubling times.
"We are sitting in the presence of a saint," she said.
Rev. Raymond Courtright, a North Dakota priest who said he has known McGuire since he was a boy in 1973, spoke of McGuire's modesty and said he never saw him do anything unseemly. He said McGuire was a driving force in his decision to join the priesthood.
"I hate to think of what my life would have been like if I'd never met father," he said.
Yet later: the Janesville Gazette has the best story of all on this sentencing, both as to clarity and amount reported. For instance, this from the two accusers:
Both men say they aren't the only victims of McGuire's molestation.
"I was not the first, and I was not the last," said one of the men, who is now 52 and living in Arizona. "He's had 35 years and hasn't shown any remorse, nor have his comrades or his superiors."
Both men want McGuire sent to prison. The other man-Victor Bender, 53, of Massachusetts-said probation would be sufficient only if McGuire confessed and identified other victims.
On the legal situation:
Wisconsin prosecutors were allowed to charge McGuire decades after the assaults because the statute of limitations clock never started ticking. That's because McGuire never lived in Wisconsin after the crimes.
On the scene:
McGuire, who sat stone-faced throughout much of the hearing, declined to comment after Carlson issued the sentence.
On McGuire’s condition:
[Defense atty. Gerald] Boyle said McGuire suffers from congestive heart failure, diabetes, kidney disease and arthritis. Boyle said McGuire needs occasional oxygen, takes 15 to 20 prescription pills a day and walks no more than 30 feet without stopping to catch his breath.
posted by Jim Bowman @ 7/18/2006 09:47:00 PM
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