Conviction Christian institutions & contexts Catholic Freeport, ME, USA · 2018

James Talbot: guilty pleas for abuse during religious instruction at a Maine church

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Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

Jesuit priest, substitute parish priest, religious instructor and sacramental authority

Organization

Society of Jesus, St. Jude Church in Freeport

Archive classification

This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.

The criminal disposition and related court record place the abuse within Talbot's religious instruction of a child whose family trusted him as their priest. Talbot had married the child's parents, baptized the child, administered first communion, and controlled access to confirmation; the reported incident occurred after he removed the child from confirmation class to a room behind the altar.

Pastoral or clerical authority
Ritual, oath, or initiation
Institutional obedience or isolation

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2018-09-24 · guilty pleas and sentence

Maine Superior Court, Cumberland County. Talbot pleaded guilty to gross sexual assault and unlawful sexual contact. The court imposed ten years with all but three years suspended on the first count and a concurrent three-year term on the second.

Documented coercion mechanisms

family trust in priestly authority
religious instruction
control over first communion and confirmation
isolation in church rooms

Cited record

Sources

state newspaper court reporting criminal disposition and nexus Bangor Daily News, 'Former Maine priest pleads guilty to sexual assault of boy, confronted by victim in court' (Sept. 24, 2018).: Detailed contemporaneous court reporting records both guilty pleas, the ten-year sentence with all but three years suspended, the concurrent term, and the priestly, sacramental and confirmation-class authority nexus.
public broadcaster news agency reporting criminal disposition corroboration Maine Public / Associated Press, 'Former Priest Sent To Prison Again For Child Sexual Abuse' (Sept. 24, 2018).: Maine's public broadcaster and the Associated Press independently corroborate the two pleas, three-year unsuspended term, parish setting, family relationship and offer of religious instruction.
state court opinion reproduction civil procedural opinion Maine Superior Court, Wheeler v. Northeast Province of the Society of Jesus, CUM-CV-16-74 (Aug. 12, 2016).: The published pre-plea civil opinion identifies Talbot, the St. Jude setting, the child's age and the institutional parties. It is used for identity and setting, not as proof of the later criminal disposition.

Source provenance

Source access and integrity log

This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.

Source and tier basis: https://www.bangordailynews.com/2018/09/24/news/former-maine-priest-pleads-guilty-to-sex-assault-of-boy-confronted-by-victim-in-court/ Corpus classification: state-newspaper-court-reporting; evidentiary role: criminal-disposition-and-nexus. SHA-256 19328a0d8eec4619412ca5d91005ce5f90b39604b63cb336b7a236648d412740
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
Source and tier basis: https://www.mainepublic.org/maine/2018-09-24/former-priest-sent-to-prison-again-for-child-sexual-abuse Corpus classification: public-broadcaster-news-agency-reporting; evidentiary role: criminal-disposition-corroboration. SHA-256 9eac64f202b10d857d40a30205879d44713f45a4c750bc84cfac18fc47cdd4e6
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
Source and tier basis: https://law.justia.com/cases/maine/superior-court/2016/cumcv-16-74.html Corpus classification: state-court-opinion-reproduction; evidentiary role: civil-procedural-opinion.
Retrieval: 2026-07-27 · Retrieval failed; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger

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