SANTA FE – A Roman Catholic priest is being tried on federal charges that he sexually abused a New Mexico boy in the early 1990s at an Air Force base and veterans’ cemetery before fleeing the U.S.
The trial of 80-year-old priest Arthur Perrault resumes Wednesday before a jury and federal judge at a courtroom in Santa Fe.
Perrault was arrested in the Moroccan city of Tangier in 2017. He taught there at an English-language school after disappearing from the U.S. in the early 1990s.
Perrault’s case marks an unusual federal criminal prosecution of a former priest in the state where dozens of clergy abuse victims have won more than $50 million in settlements from the Santa Fe Archdiocese. The archdiocese is seeking bankruptcy protection as a result.
