Michigan law enforcement officials have repeatedly said that they won’t allow the passage of time to deter them from conducting criminal investigations. Two recent arrests made it clear that they take that vow seriously.
One man was arrested on a charge of criminal sexual conduct stemming from an alleged assault in 2010 in Jackson County. The other man, 77, is a former priest accused of sexually assaulting a minor in 1977.
A 28-year-old Coldwater man was charged with first-degree criminal sexual conduct and unlawful imprisonment after Jackson County officials began to test and investigate old sexual assault kits, a news report stated.
Jackson joined Ingham County’s Sexual Assault Kit team late last year, part of an effort to reexamine nearly 200 old sexual assault kits.
The suspect also faces third-degree criminal sexual assault conduct charges in Kalamazoo County, as well as a pair of felony counts of first-degree criminal sexual assault in Calhoun County.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said the former priest was arrested at his Illinois home on a single charge of second-degree criminal sexual conduct. The 78-year-old is formerly of Farmington.
Officials accuse him of assaulting a 14-year-old in late summer 1977, at Our Lady of Sorrows in Farmington, where he was a priest.
According to a news report, he was charged in Michigan with sexual assault of two minors in 1977. He apparently served time on those charges, but was later transferred by the church from the Archdiocese of Detroit to a post in Cleveland, Ohio, and then to Joliet, Illinois.