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California

CALIFORNIA BRIEFING / COSTA MESA

By Hector Becerra
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The Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange County announced a settlement Friday with a man who said a priest sexually abused him repeatedly when he was a second-grader at a Costa Mesa parish school.

Costa Mesa police opened an investigation on Father Denis Lyons after Jonathan Kirrer, 24, alleged that he was molested by the priest when he was a student at St. John the Baptist Church.

Ryan Lilyengren, a spokesman for the diocese, said money to pay the settlement will not come from parishes or schools but rather from insurance and administrative accounts. As part of the agreement, plaintiffs’ attorneys asked that the amount to be paid not be disclosed, Lilyengren said.

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Lyons was removed from his last post, at a Dana Point parish, in 2002 after allegations surfaced about the molestation of a teenage boy. Criminal charges were dropped in that case after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003 invalidated a California law that allowed the prosecution of old sexual abuse cases.

-- Hector Becerra

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Hector Becerra

Hector Becerra is managing editor of the Los Angeles Times. A native Angeleno who grew up in Boyle Heights, Becerra’s first foray into journalism was as the editor of the University Times at Cal State Los Angeles. He started his career at the Los Angeles Times in 1999 and was a general assignment reporter until 2014, covering everything from wildfires to crime to Latino cultural trends. He has been among the first to a murder scene as part of a ride-along in South L.A. and has tried his hand as a field worker, picking strawberries in Santa Maria. Becerra was part of the team of reporters that won the Pulitzer Prize’s Public Service award for its coverage of the city of Bell corruption scandal. He was city editor for the California section until 2022, when he was promoted to deputy managing editor. He was named managing editor in 2024.

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