Documentary record Bound by Fear
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Conviction Christian institutions & contexts Catholic Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA · 1992

New Mexico: Catholic priest convicted decades later of sexually abusing altar servers across three Albuquerque parishes

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

Catholic priest; pastor, St. Bernadette's Church, Albuquerque

Organization

St. Bernadette's Church, Albuquerque, Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, Albuquerque, Our Lady of the Assumption Church, Albuquerque

Spiritual nexus

Perrault was the assigned Catholic priest and pastor at the parishes where his victims served as altar boys; Doe 1 became an altar server under Perrault's direct authority at age nine, and other victims encountered him through his priestly role at two other Albuquerque parishes. No victim was a relative of Perrault.

  • Pastoral or clerical authority

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. Date in cited record · jury verdict and sentence

    United States District Court, District of New Mexico. A jury convicted Arthur Perrault, a Catholic priest at several Albuquerque parishes from the mid-1960s to 1992, of all seven counts of sexual abuse of altar-server boys, including Doe 1, who became an altar server at St. Bernadette's at age nine when Perrault was the priest there. He was sentenced to 365 months' imprisonment.

  2. 2021-04-21 · direct appeal, No. 19-2184

    United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. Affirmed. The court rejected challenges to jury impartiality, venue and cumulative error.

Appellate history

  1. Tenth Circuit affirmed the conviction and sentence on April 21, 2021.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • position as parish priest with access to altar servers
  • decades-long tenure across multiple parishes (St. Bernadette's, Our Lady of Guadalupe, Our Lady of the Assumption)
  • fled the country for 25 years to Morocco (no US extradition treaty) after a reporter began investigating

Primary record

Sources

official court judgment federal appellate judgment United States v. Perrault, 995 F.3d 748 (10th Cir. Apr. 21, 2021).

Tenth Circuit opinion affirming Arthur Perrault's conviction on seven counts of sexual abuse of altar-server boys across multiple Albuquerque Catholic parishes, and his 365-month sentence.

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