PERV PRIEST COLLARED!
Devil in disguise spent 26 years running from law
AN UNHOLY terror was nabbed in Morocco and shipped back to the U.S. to finally face justice for molesting a child after decades on the lam, say authorities in New Mexico.
Arthur J. Perrault, a former Roman Catholic priest, vanished in 1992 — days before a lawyer filed two lawsuits claiming the cleric sexually assaulted seven children from a local parish!
But dogged investigators eventually tracked Perrault to Tangier, where he was teaching kids at an Englishlanguage school!
Armed with a U.S. criminal indictment, local lawmen hauled him in and delivered him to the FBI last month.
Now Perrault, 80, is being charged with molesting an 11-year-old boy between 1991 and 1992 at the Santa Fe National Cemetery and Kirtland Air Force Base, where he’d worked as a chaplain.
If convicted, he faces a life sentence.
But that may be just the beginning — the notorious clergyman is also suspected of abusing at least 38 boys during his 19 years in New Mexico!
Shockingly, those alleged incidents occurred after he was booted from his parish post in Connecticut after being accused of abusing young men in the ’60s.
But instead of calling the cops on the suspected perv, the church packed him off to a now-closed center for pedophile priests in Jemez Springs, N.M. — which was once known for treating sex sickos through prayer! Outrageously, after a oneyear stint in the residential facility, a psychologist recommended Perrault for a high school teaching job! And by 1985, he was named pastor at St. Bernadette Catholic Church in Albuquerque.
The Archdiocese of Santa Fe claims it began a “canonical investigation” of Perrault in 1992 and contacted police — but he fled the country before he could be arrested.
“Bringing Arthur Perrault back to New Mexico took a lot of perseverance,” says special agent James C. Langenberg. “But the FBI and our partners were determined to make sure he faced justice — no matter how long it took or how far we had to go to get him.”