Ex-Priest Facing Sex Charges

A retired Roman Catholic priest surrendered to police Wednesday and was booked on charges that he sexually molested a 15-year-old boy at a Los Angeles County juvenile hall, authorities said.

Stephen Hernandez, 70, was booked on suspicion of child molestation and released on $240,000 bail.

He is the second priest facing criminal charges in L.A. County for allegedly abusing children sexually. The other, Michael Wempe, is in jail awaiting trial.

Hernandez’s arrest comes a year after local prosecutors were forced to dismiss criminal cases against 10 priests and a seminarian when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the 1994 California law allowing the retroactive prosecution of older sex crimes against children.

Hernandez is expected to be charged as early as today with as many as 12 counts of child molestation involving the incarcerated Eagle Rock youth in 2001.

“We are confident about our case,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. William Hodgman, who leads the district attorney’s sex crimes division. He declined to discuss details.

Although the case involves just one victim, Det. Jim Brown of the Los Angeles Police Department said authorities are trying to determine if other boys at the Eastlake Avenue facility or elsewhere were molested by Hernandez. Another person filed a civil lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in October, alleging that Hernandez molested him in 1984 and 1985 while he was a student at Santa Clara Catholic Church in Oxnard. Those earlier allegations are too old for prosecution but may be introduced in court.

Attorney Don Steier, who represents Hernandez, called the charges “bewildering.” He said he doubted that a frail priest could use physical or spiritual intimidation to sexually abuse an incarcerated youth with gang associations.

“This is not your usual complaining witness-victim,” he said, accusing the youth of being a “strapping gangbanger” and “streetwise kid.”

But the boy’s former criminal lawyer, Marc D. Wasserman, said his client is “by no means a hardened juvenile criminal.” The boy was in Juvenile Hall for throwing bottles from a building with friends and hitting someone below, he said.

“He just had no chance or no choice in his life,” Wasserman said of the youth, whose older brother belongs to a gang and who has been shot seven times by rival gang members.

“This was the only guy this kid had to turn to ... and he just completely reeled him in” and took advantage of their relationship, Wasserman said.

The attorney alleged that after the boy’s release, Hernandez touched him at his home and at the priest’s residence at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in El Sereno. The priest also took photos of the boys in various states of undress, Wasserman said.

Ken Kondo, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Department of Probation, which runs the juvenile halls, said Hernandez “has no access to the facility.” He said all volunteers, including priests, must go though “a thorough background check.”

Tod Tamberg, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Archdiocese, said Hernandez was retired and his official assignment history does not indicate that he worked either as a chaplain or volunteer chaplain in juvenile hall. He said the archdiocese did not post Hernandez’s bail.