Washington

The move comes in protest against the recent Vatican decision which announced Diocese of Ootacamund is reinstating Joseph Jeyapaul to ministry. Minnesota attorney Jeff Anderson will file suit on behalf of the victim in federal court that claims the Diocese of Ootacamund endangered children by reinstating Jeyapaul.

Jeyapaul who served as a priest in Crookston township of Minnesota in 2004 and 2005 was arrested in India in 2012 and extradited to the US on charges of sexually abusing two girls in a congregation. He was later deported to India last year, after serving his sentence of one year and one day. In a statement, advocacy group SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) announced that one of the sexual abuse survivors would sue the priest and the diocese.

“It may be the most irresponsible Vatican move we’ve ever seen: Catholic officials in Rome have lifted the suspension of a recently convicted predator priest. We are stunned and saddened by such blatant recklessness and callousness,” Barbara Dorris of St Louis, Outreach Director of SNAP, said in a statement. A letter sent to Anderson and Roseau County Attorney Lisa Hanson and signed by over 500 Jeyapaul supporters in India will be released as evidence of the public danger permitted by Indian Bishop and Vatican, it said. 

“On January 16, 2016, with the permission of Pope Francis, Bishop Amalraj lifted the suspension of Father Joseph Jeyapaul,” the firm said.  

In May 2015, the Indian-American priest had pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl while serving in Minnesota. The plea arrived a decade after Joseph Jeyapaul molested a young girl, and was extradited from India.

According to reports, Jeyapaul had previously flown out of the US in September 2005 before criminal charges were filed; he was subsequently arrested in March 2012 in India before being extradited in November last year to face criminal charges in two different cases alleging sexual abuse of underage female parishioners. 

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