Former Priest Pleads Not Guilty to Molestation

A former priest pleaded not guilty to multiple counts of child molestation Thursday as bail for a retired priest charged with molesting seven girls was halved to $500,000.

Michael Stephen Baker, 54, entered the not-guilty pleas to 29 counts in Downey Superior Court. Baker has previously admitted to Cardinal Roger M. Mahony that he molested boys.

He was arrested Sept. 25 and freed on $800,000 bail Oct. 7.

Baker allegedly abused a boy between 1976 and 1985. Baker told Mahony in 1986 that he molested young boys, and was reassigned. Mahony later approved a secret $1.3-million payment to two men who said they had been abused by Baker from 1984 to 1999. Baker left the church in 2000.

Also Thursday during a bail hearing for retired priest G. Neville Rucker, Deputy Dist. Atty. Christina Fleming disclosed that nine additional allegations of abuse had been reported to police since Rucker had been plucked off a cruise ship in the Pacific.

Los Angeles Superior Court Commissioner Jeffrey M. Harkavy ordered Rucker’s bail reduced from $1 million to $500,000 at the request of defense attorney Donald Steier.

Fleming disclosed the new allegations after a Probation Department report recommended that Rucker be released without bail, prosecutors said.

Steier has maintained that Rucker, who lives in a retirement home and who entered court in a wheelchair, is not a danger to the community.

Prosecutors have said Rucker knew he was the subject of an investigation and was fleeing when he was snatched by authorities Sept. 27 from a cruise ship that had been diverted to Alaska’s Aleutian Islands

Steier said Rucker was on a two-month vacation cruise.

Rucker is charged with 23 counts of child molestation between 1946 and 1976. He is alleged to have abused seven girls while he worked at several churches in Los Angeles County, including St. Alphonsus in East Los Angeles, St. Anthony in El Segundo and St. Agatha in Los Angeles. All of the girls were younger than 14, prosecutors said.

Rucker was one of seven priests removed by Mahony from the ministry this year when the cardinal implemented a “zero tolerance” policy for those who had abused minors.