Retired Priest to Be Tried

A judge Wednesday ordered retired Roman Catholic priest Michael Wempe, accused of repeated child abuse, to stand trial on charges of sexually molesting a boy between 1990 and 1995.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Jacob Adajian ruled after a weeklong hearing that there was enough evidence against Wempe, 64, for a trial. He faces the possibility of more than 20 years in prison if convicted.

The alleged victim, now 24, testified that Wempe molested him in the priest’s car and in his office at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Two other alleged victims also testified that Wempe molested them.

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of the Los Angeles Archdiocese has acknowledged that after learning of earlier abuse allegations against Wempe, he sent the priest for treatment and then transferred him to a chaplain job at Cedars-Sinai. In retrospect, Mahony has said, he should have forced Wempe to resign.

Charges that Wempe earlier molested the alleged victim’s two older brothers and three others were dismissed last year after the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the prosecution of decades-old molestation cases. The former priest was one of 10 whose Los Angeles County cases were thrown out. He was rearrested when the youngest brother came forward and alleged that he had been molested more recently.

“The defendant’s crimes are terrible,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Todd Hicks. “They are sinful.”

But one of Wempe’s defense attorneys, Leonard B. Levine, attacked the credibility of the alleged victim in this case, accusing him of making up the allegations to seek revenge for his two older brothers. One of the brothers told a reporter after the Supreme Court ruling that he could understand people taking justice into their own hands.

“It’s clear from the evidence that these allegations were likely fabricated,” Levine said outside court.

In 1974, Wempe starting working at St. Jude parish in Westlake Village, where the alleged victim’s two older brothers claimed that Wempe molested them on overnight trips and in his parish room. In 2002 the brothers filed a lawsuit in which they alleged that Wempe had continued to abuse them despite transfers to other parishes.

According to a report released by Mahony this week, Wempe was accused of molesting 13 youths from 1972 to 1995. He is being held in lieu of $500,000 bail in Los Angeles County Jail and is scheduled to return to court March 3.