BROOKLYN (NY)
Newsday
STAFF AND WIRE REPORTSMarch 26, 2003
A visiting priest from India was sentenced to 4 months in jail yesterday for molesting a Brooklyn girl during a 1999 sick call to her grandmother.
The Rev. Francis Nelson, 39, is the only priest convicted in the city in the Roman Catholic Church's sex abuse scandal. His case provided a graphic example of how the church transferred sex abusers from one diocese to another.
The Diocese of Brooklyn banished the visiting Nelson just after the abuse. But instead of returning to his native India, Nelson found employment in the Archdiocese of New York, where officials said that neither India nor Brooklyn church officials warned them about Nelson. At the time of his arrest, Nelson was working at a Harlem church.
