Priest on Probation Arrested, Suspected of Molesting Teen : Crime: Suspect had hidden the fact that he was convicted of molestation in 1984. He was serving as a counselor for church youths.

A Greek-Orthodox priest, who had hidden the fact that he is a convicted child molester from officials of a Hermosa Beach church where he counseled teen-agers, has been arrested for allegedly trying to sexually molest a young man, authorities said Thursday.

Stanley Adamakis, 47, a volunteer at St. Cross Episcopal Church, who was known to church teen-agers as “Father Stan,” turned himself in last week after the alleged victim, an 18-year-old man, and his mother reported the incident, Hermosa Beach police said.

Reached Thursday at his home in Northridge, Adamakis refused comment. He is free on $17,500 bond pending arraignment Jan. 23 in Torrance Municipal Court.

Adamakis has not worked as a priest for at least 15 years and faces being defrocked for alleged “sexual misbehavior,” an official of the Western Diocese of the Greek Orthodox Church said.

Adamakis is employed as an administrator of a suicide prevention program for Family Services of Los Angeles, a private nonprofit organization.

Although detectives described the alleged sexual incident as “your basic child molestation case,” the arrest has revived long-simmering, ill-will in the beach community toward the landmark church.

In the last four years, St. Cross has struggled to rebound from testimony in the 1985 preliminary hearing in the McMartin Pre-School molestation case that children from the Manhattan Beach school were molested and forced to witness satanic rituals in the church.

“This is a sad and difficult experience and it couldn’t have come at a worse time,” the Rev. Jack Eales of St. Cross said Thursday.

Despite vigilance in the South Bay about child molestation because of the McMartin case, Eales said it “never crossed anyone’s mind” to screen the scores of volunteers who help at the church.

“We just never checked,” Eales said. “There never seemed a reason to. I suspect it’s just in our nature, being a church, to reach out to people and be basically trusting.”

The church has now decided to screen volunteers as well as church employees, Eales said.

Only after Adamakis was arrested did Eales learn that he is serving five years’ probation after being sentenced to 78 days in jail for fondling two adolescent brothers in Torrance in 1984.

Since Adamakis’ arrest, several other youths have reported that he tried to seduce them, said Hermosa Beach Police Detective Tom Bohlin. None of the youths came forward earlier, either because they were embarrassed or felt that Adamakis was harmless, he said.

The allegations that led to the arrest were made on the afternoon of Dec. 17, when the alleged victim and his mother went to police, Bohlin said. The teen-ager, who lives in Rancho Palos Verdes, told detectives that he had gone to a home on The Strand in Hermosa Beach the night before to sleep over with two 17-year-old friends, one of whom is a member of Adamakis’ youth group, the detective said.

Adamakis had been invited to chaperon the youths by the parents, who were out of town.

The reasoning, the detective said, was “what’s better than to have a priest watch your children while you’re away for the weekend?”

According to a police report, Adamakis bought beer for the youths and they got drunk while watching television movies. As they prepared for bed, the report said, Adamakis told the 18-year-old that he should remove his clothes, which were dirty, before he went to sleep in a clean bed.

The teen awoke about 2:30 a.m. when the older man crawled into bed and fondled him, the report said.

The youth told Adamakis that he was in “big trouble.” When he ran off to awaken his friends, Adamakis left the house, the report said.