Posted on 08/16/2012 7:46:17 PM PDT by RnMomof7
Benjamin Brink/The Oregonian St. Luke Catholic Church in Woodburn, where the Rev. Angel Armando Perez is the parish priest. It was close to midnight Sunday when Woodburn resident James Curths saw the 12-year-old boy running down the street toward him. Curths said the child, panting and out of breath, begged for help, telling him a man was chasing him.
Moments later, a man rounded the corner wearing only underwear. He stood a short distance away, trying to wave the boy over as Curths and his sister-in-law prepared to drive the boy to relatives.
"He was staring at us," said Heather Rodriguez, 28, Curths' sister-in-law, who was also outside. "Then he stood there with his hands on his hips like, 'You're really not going to give him to me?'"
Rodriguez and Curths, 35, told the man they were calling the police. Only then, they said, did the man jog away.
The man who chased after the boy that night, Woodburn police say, was the Rev. Angel Armando Perez, the parish priest at St. Luke Catholic Church in Woodburn. Early Monday, the boy gave police a detailed account of the alleged sex abuse he said occurred at Perez's home, leading to Perez's arrest later Monday.
Court records released Tuesday detail the alleged abuse and the pastor's actions after the incident.
"Father Angel touched me"
Perez was arraigned in Marion County Circuit Court on Tuesday, appearing via video from Marion County Jail, wearing a black V-neck top with his hands secured in front of his waist. He faced allegations of first-degree sexual abuse, abuse of a child in the display of sexually explicit conduct, furnishing alcohol to a minor and driving under the influence of intoxicants.
The Salem boy told authorities that Perez had asked his parents a few days earlier if he could take him on a trip to the mountains. He and his family attended a community church event Sunday night, and the 12-year-old went with Perez that night to the pastor's house, a grayish-green home less than 200 paces from the church's front door.
The boy told police Perez gave him a beer and they watched a movie. The boy told investigators that an air mattress was set up on the living room floor for him to sleep on. He said he fell asleep on the mattress, the affidavit said.
Later, the boy said, he was "woken up by a couple of flashes."
He said that when he opened his eyes, he saw Perez next to the air mattress, with one hand on the boy's genitals and one hand holding a cellphone. The boy discovered his underwear and shorts lowered to his knees, while Perez was dressed in underwear and a T-shirt, the boy told police.
The boy said he went to pack up his things when Perez went upstairs. "Father Angel called to him saying, 'Come back to bed,'" the police affidavit says.
Instead, the boy said goodbye and ran off.
Curths, who was hosting a barbecue when the boy showed up outside his house, said he looked distraught. "He just seemed really terrified, and he was almost in tears," Curths said.
When the pastor caught up to the boy outside Curths' house, wearing what Curths and his sister-in-law said looked like a burgundy Speedo swimsuit, the boy hid behind Curths.
"He was scared to death," Curths said. "It was like someone running from a ghost."
Curths said the boy told him that the man had "touched his privates."
James Curths, 35, said the boy looked "like someone running from a ghost." Curths drove the boy to his sister's house, where the boy told his sister what had happened, the affidavit said.
According to the affidavit, the boy told her, "Father Angel touched me in my privates."
He was shaking and appeared scared, the sister told authorities. The boy's sister alerted her mother, and his father drove to pick up the boy.
"I made a mistake"
Meanwhile, according to the affidavit, Perez had driven to the boy's home in Salem to talk to the boy's mother and brother about 2 a.m. Monday.
Perez had a strong odor of alcohol and appeared intoxicated, the brother of the alleged victim told police.
The brother told police that Perez's first statement was, "I am very sorry; I made a mistake."
Perez continued to ask forgiveness, and added, "I didn't mean to hurt" the child, the boy's brother told police.
"I am just one who serves in the church, and I have sinned; don't stop believing in the church," Perez reportedly told the victim's brother, according to the affidavit.
The Oregonian’s continuing coverage of the Rev. Angel Armando Perez, 46, the parish priest at St. Luke Catholic Church in Woodburn, who faces accusations of sex abuse involving a minor.
Perez also offered to let the boy's mother and brother check his phone, saying, "You won't find anything," the affidavit said. The relatives asked Perez to leave the house.
"This is the last time you will see me," Perez said before leaving, the brother told police.
On Monday, Woodburn detectives interviewed Perez at the Woodburn Police Department.
Perez told them he drank too much at the community event. He said he and the boy were given a ride back to his Woodburn home. There, Perez said, he drank another beer, and they watched a movie, the affidavit said.
He told police "at some point he blacked out and doesn't remember what happened," the affidavit said.
Perez told Woodburn Detective Sgt. Nick Wilson that he remembered going upstairs and brushing his teeth, and when he came downstairs, he recalled a look of "disappointment and anger" on the boy's face, the affidavit said.
Perez, the affidavit said, admitted he drove intoxicated to the boy's home to apologize and find out what happened. He said he dropped to his knees and begged for forgiveness.
Are you using this news worthy story to tell the world that all of Christianity is perverted and twisted?
If you are a Christian, then why not just let the newsworthy story stand on it’s own, it is a strange and sad case.
You don’t need to turn this into a collection of all of the crimes of Christianity, with links and neon lettering.
What is your gut feeling, do you think it might turn out to be totally innocent, and a mistake of some sort?
Are you REALLY making excuses for this priest? Are you REALLY try to spread the blame around for his sin and sinfulness? If you are, I think you’d lost a lot of us.
**Are you REALLY making excuses for this priest? Are you REALLY try to spread the blame around for his sin and sinfulness? If you are, I think you’d lost a lot of us.**
Not trying to make excuses. Just pointing out that the truth of the matter is that there is a lot more sexual abuse in schools and orther denominations.
Is posting only part of the truth OK with you? Just post about the Catholic priests/ What about all the other nonsense that goes on?
Which denomination, you haven't named one have you?
I know some people will not like my comments and will jump to defendthe church (how unfair of me /s)... but I know, deep in my heart, there is a lot of CORRUPTION still in that church, still hidden under the surface.
Their SILENCE in certain "cultural" issues... tells clearly where they really belong.
Besides the immense amount of abuse that has happened in the Catholic Church, the Church has a sordid history of covering up and protecting priests so that they can continue to abuse for decades. So there's that.
There's also the fact that the Catholic Church holds itself up as a paragon of morality and truth, and expends great effort in having answers for everything that do not admit alternate interpretations. For such an institution to be guilty of sexually victimizing literally thousands of children, allows the Church to receive back from millions of people a focus for the rage the Church has created in them by inflicting its arrogance upon them.
You see, millions of people feel that if the Church actually deserved its claims of holiness, such abuse would simply never happen within its ranks, and if it did, it would be treated with the utmost honesty and protection for the victims. Instead, the Church wants it both ways - to be the mandated for all spiritual practices and decisions for the entirety of the human race, and be allowed to escape with a shrug about being just as human as anyone else when it is found to have committed, and protected, crimes of atrocity.
The great unwashed see that as profound hypocrisy.
That the Church then responds by spinning and minimizing its abuse statistics and denying all arrogance in the face of this uproar doesn't exactly help things get any better.
Really? The church -- and by that I mean the parish -- didn't ordain the priest and didn't select him to serve there; the bishop does that. Destroying the parish because they were unlucky enough to be saddled with a pervert pastor is a bit like shooting a sick person to kill the germs.
Do you favor shutting down and selling off public schools when a senior faculty member is discovered molesting students, or do you think we should remove (and prosecute, if possible) the guilty person and try to hire someone decent?
The people of this parish didn't molest anyone. They deserve our prayers, not our vows of revenge, financial or otherwise. Save that for the perp.
Why is this even in the Religion forum?
What I asked was, which denomination? This thread is about the Catholic denomination, which ones do you want us to look at in regards to this article.
Which denomination has “a lot more sexual abuse”. is it the Methodists, The Apostolic Faith Mission, the Spiritual Israel Church and Its Army, the Presbyterians, or what?
So the effect of sacramental grace obtained from ordination into the "one true" church can be examined.
The Church seems to have alot of these types of “problems”.
Such a society has no moral standing to point any fingers at anyone else and then complain about hypocrisy. God will judge us more severely than the Nazis if we don't repent.
Do you have the same feelings about the immense amount of abuse that occurs in public education and the indifference of property tax payers who blindly support same?
Well, it's taken 2,000 years but it looks like have finally found someone without sin who is qualified to cast the first stone. Be careful you don't out your eye out throwing at the whole Church.
Peace be with you
That’s a conclusion reached by the obtuse.
Show me where in Scripture it says schadenfreude is a Fruit of the Holy Spirit.
Peace be with you
"Well, it's taken 2,000 years but it looks like have finally found someone without sin who is qualified to cast the first stone."
I'll keep my stones. Care to comment on why the special sacremental grace had no effect?
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