Navy Chaplain Gets 2 Years for Sex Crime

[Ghost in the Machine]

Navy Chaplain Gets 2 Years for Sex Crime
Published: 12/6/07, 5:25 PM EDT
By MATTHEW BARAKAT

QUANTICO, Va. (AP) - An HIV-positive Navy chaplain was sentenced Thursday to two years in prison after pleading guilty to forcible sodomy and other charges.

Lt. Cmdr. John Thomas Lee, 42, of Burke, Va., was sentenced after entering a plea agreement at his court-martial at the Quantico Marine Corps Base in northern Virginia. Lee admitted having sex with an Air Force officer without disclosing that he had HIV and forcing himself on a U.S. Naval Academy midshipman.

Marine spokesman Maj. Tim Keefe said after Thursday's hearing that nobody is known to have contracted HIV from Lee.

Lee, a Catholic priest, was assigned to the academy from 2003 to 2006 and later to Quantico. He was relieved of his duties in June.

The forcible sodomy occurred in the fall of 2004, when the midshipman was in his junior year. The midshipman, who was not identified, had previously received counseling from Lee, and said he allowed Lee to perform oral sex on him because he was intimidated by Lee's status as a chaplain.

"This was a priest. This was a guy who knew all of my darkest secrets," the victim, now a Navy ensign, testified during the trial's sentencing phase.

http://www.att.net/s/editorial.dll?pnum=1&bfromind=7434&eeid=5565898&_sitecat=1522&dcatid=0&eetype=article&render=y&ac=1&ck=&ch=ne

[Ilsa]

1. Read it. Sent an email to a friend who retired from the navy. Now I need

to resume banging my head into the wall over the state of things.

Has anyone been interviewing all of these convicted priests to find ot what their problem is? Were they abused by priests as children?