Church employee accused of sexually assaulting teenager

An employee of St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church in The Woodlands was arrested Tuesday, accused of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl last week at his home.

Ronald Montgomery See, 53, of Willis, is being charged with aggravated sexual assault of a child, a felony.

See is a 14-year IT employee of St. Anthony and has been suspended without pay, according to the church. He was being held on $150,000 bail at the Montgomery County Jail, according to jail records.

In statement, St. Anthony said the alleged victim was neither a student at its school nor involved in the parish.

See’s “responsibilities did not include working with minors. He submitted to three criminal background checks by the parish as an employee, with the most recent in 2018,” the statement read. “We have contacted the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office and have assured them of our complete cooperation in its investigation and prosecution of this matter.”

The church asked that anyone with information on the case call the sheriff ’s office special victims unit at 936-538-3502.

The case came to light when a sibling of the girl told their mother Sunday that the 13-year-old had shared a bed with See, a close family friend, when the two children stayed overnight Saturday at his home, according to a probable cause affidavit filed Wednesday by a sheriff’s detective.

When the mother confronted See, he contradicted himself, and she took the girl’s cellphone, on which she found a messaging app she was unfamiliar with. In the app, she found messages between See and her daughter of a

“very disturbing nature,” the affidavit stated.

The girl told her mother See made sexual contact with her on Saturday night in his bedroom.

The next morning, the girl was interviewed at the child advocacy group Children’s Safe Harbor. She told the interviewer, in the presence of a sheriff ’s detective, that she and her sibling were at See’s for a “movie night.” She said that once she was asleep in the living room, See took her into his bedroom, according to court documents.

In July 2002, See was arrested on charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a felony, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety. They were lowered to assault threat bodily injury, a misdemeanor, after he pleaded guilty later that year, public records show.

Montgomery County authorities are already investigating an Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston priest at Conroe’s Sacred Heart Catholic Church who is charged with five counts of indecency with a child. The priest, Manuel De La Rosa-Lopez, is slated to go to trial in January after several delays caused by the pandemic.