Documentary record Bound by Fear
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Conviction Christian institutions & contexts Catholic Huntington Beach, California, USA · 1986

United States: Orange diocese associate pastor convicted on 26 counts; initially sentenced to probation

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

associate pastor

Organization

St Bonaventure, Huntington Beach, Diocese of Orange

Spiritual nexus

Parish boys under an associate pastor's supervision; the probation-only initial disposition is itself a documented artifact of the era's handling.

  • Pastoral or clerical authority

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. 1986-09-30 · guilty plea; probation, later six years on violation

    California state court, USA. Andrew Christian Andersen, associate pastor at St Bonaventure in Huntington Beach, pleaded guilty in 1986 to 26 felony counts of molesting four boys and was sentenced to probation with treatment rather than prison. He continued offending during therapy; after a 1990 New Mexico arrest he received six years for the probation violation. He was laicised in 1996.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • pastoral supervision of parish boys

Primary record

Sources

national newspaper court reporting verdict and sentencing report 'Priest Convicted on 26 Counts of Molesting Church Altar Boys', Los Angeles Times, 30 Sept. 1986 (archived).

The contemporaneous LA Times court report of the plea and sentence.

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