Ex-priest guilty on 7 counts
Perrault to remain in federal custody until sentencing
For years, Elaine Montoya would type the name of the man she said had abused her into an internet search engine to check if he had died.
Former Roman Catholic priest Arthur Perrault had sexually abused her hundreds of times when she was a teenager in the 1970s, she said Wednesday. But days before Montoya and her brother, who also says he was abused by Perrault, filed a lawsuit against him in 1992, the man fled the country.
Perrault became a ghost Montoya expected to resurface in obituary announcements. Then, two years ago, the FBI contacted her and said Perrault had been found and detained in Morocco.
“It was beyond my wildest imagination,” said Montoya, 59. “For the past 26 years, we never thought anything would come of this. … We never thought this would happen in our lifetime.”
Following a federal trial in Santa Fe that began early last week, a jury convicted Perrault on six counts of aggravated sexual abuse and one count of abusive sexual contact with a minor under the age of 12 in a case in which the former priest was accused of raping and molesting an altar boy at Kirtland Air Force Base and the Santa Fe National Cemetery between 1991 and 1992.
The location of the crimes placed the case under federal jurisdiction.
Perrault, 81, served as a chaplain at Kirtland and a priest in various Albuquerque parochial schools and parishes
from 1966-92.
At least 38 people have accused him of abusing them during that time, when they were children, and more than a half-dozen testified during the trial. But the charges filed by the U.S. Department of Justice focused on a single accuser, a man who was 10 when he said the abuse began.
Now in his late 30s, the man first came forward with allegations against Perrault in a civil lawsuit filed in 2015. In 2017, a state district judge ordered the former priest to pay the man $16 million in damages.
The guilty verdicts the jury handed Perrault on Wednesday included counts of criminal sexual penetration of a child and intentional touching of a child’s genitalia.
Wearing a creased black suit and white sneakers, Perrault stood as the verdict was read.
He will remain in federal custody until his sentencing hearing, which has yet to be scheduled, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Mexico. He faces a maximum penalty of life in prison on the aggravated sexual abuse charges and a maximum penalty of 10 years of imprisonment on the abusive sexual contact charge.
“I know this was not an easy case,” U.S. District Judge Martha Vázquez told the jury.
More than a dozen people sat in the audience to hear the verdict, and there was a moment of muted applause.
In a statement, U.S. Attorney John C. Anderson said, “Today’s jury verdict makes clear that courageous victims and the relentless efforts of law enforcement can, together, make justice a reality. … [Perrault] has at long last been held accountable for his crimes.”
Peggy and James McLoughlin, who were married by Perrault in 1988, drove from Bosque Farms to hear the verdict.
“Just the fact that this man of the cloth, this man of faith, has [caused] so much pain,” said Peggy McLoughlin, wiping her eyes with a tissue. “I am just really glad that it is over. It was the right verdict.”
The couple plan to have their vows renewed by a different priest.
A man who said he was abused by Perrault for years, starting in seventh grade, said his parents never believed he had been abused by the priest, and it caused estrangement in his family.
“I am still angry at all of the people that knew what was going on and did nothing,” the man said, adding that Perrault “is not the only guilty one.”
Still, Montoya called the verdict a landmark.
“The decision that the jury made, it is a precedent,” she said.
Montoya said she was groomed and abused by Perrault at numerous locations in Albuquerque from age 14 to 16. It was only when she decided to tell her older brother, Paul, about the abuse that she learned he also had been abused by Perrault.
The siblings brought their allegations to the Rev. Donald Starkey in 1985, but “Father Starkey told us they had known for 25 years and there was nothing they could do,” Montoya said. Starkey died in 2016, according to an obituary.
After speaking with Starkey, the siblings went to the police, but a criminal investigation was abandoned based on insufficient evidence, Montoya said. It was in the early ’90s that she decided to file a lawsuit that triggered Perrault to flee first to Canada and then Morocco in 1992.
Montoya was awarded $600,000 in a settlement from the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, according to a 1993 story by the Associated Press.
Perrault first served as a priest in Connecticut. He came to New Mexico in 1965 to be treated for pedophilia at the now-shuttered Servants of the Paraclete facility in Jemez Springs after facing accusations of molestation in Connecticut, according to court documents. He was then allowed to re-enter the clergy in New Mexico.
Some of the testimony in Perrault’s trial indicated he later brought children back to the Jemez Springs center and molested them there.
The Archdiocese of Santa Fe filed for bankruptcy protection last year, citing the extensive cost of clergy abuse settlements.
“When Paul and I came forward, nobody believed us,” Montoya said. The verdict, however, is a message that “we are no longer going to allow abuse by Roman Catholic priests here in New Mexico.”
As she spoke outside the federal courtroom Wednesday, another abuse survivor stopped to greet her, and the two embraced.
“It happened,” Montoya said, smiling, though her eyes were rimmed with red. “What a happy day,” the man said. The survivors held each other for some time, crying soundlessly.