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Conviction Christian institutions & contexts Catholic St. Louis County, Missouri, USA · 2019

United States: priest Fred Lenczycki sentenced for sodomy of two boys in a north St. Louis County parish

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Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

Catholic priest, parish assignment in north St. Louis County, Missouri

Organization

Archdiocese of St. Louis

Archive classification

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

Lenczycki abused the two Missouri victims using the access and trust granted by his position as parish priest; church officials had moved him between dioceses (Illinois to Missouri) despite an existing abuse history, extending his access to new children under clerical authority.

  • Pastoral or clerical authority

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. 2019-08-16 · guilty plea and sentencing

    St. Louis County, Missouri Circuit Court. Fred Lenczycki pleaded guilty in May 2019 to two counts of sodomy against two boys, committed 1991-1994 while assigned to a north St. Louis County parish. Sentenced August 16, 2019 to two concurrent 10-year terms. This followed an earlier 2004 Illinois conviction (five years) for abusing three boys in Hinsdale, Illinois in the 1980s, after which Lenczycki became, in 2008, the first U.S. priest civilly committed as a sexually violent person under Illinois law. No appeal of the Missouri plea and sentence has been located.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • parish and pastoral access to children
  • prior interdiocesan transfer despite known abuse history in Illinois

Cited record

Sources

national catholic press contemporaneous reporting Crux, 'Priest already deemed sexually violent sentenced again' (Aug. 16, 2019).

Reports the Aug. 16, 2019 sentencing to two concurrent 10-year terms for sodomy against two boys in St. Louis County 1991-1994, the May 2019 guilty plea, and Lenczycki's 2004 Illinois conviction and 2008 sexually-violent-person civil commitment.

legal case archive background reference Recovered Memory Project case file, 'Illinois v. Rev. Fred Lenczycki.'

Background on Lenczycki's 2004 Illinois conviction and abuse history across Illinois, Missouri, and California, corroborating the interdiocesan-transfer pattern.

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://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-usa/2019/08/priest-already-deemed-sexually-violent-sentenced-again Corpus classification: national-catholic-press; evidentiary role: contemporaneous-reporting. SHA-256 42f160c7b7cbd435c9268b895aace3f453f2a28bd5d838644066ce3b4ca312e3
Retrieval
2026-07-20 · Preserved
Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
Source and tier basis
https://www.recoveredmemory.org/legal-cases/illinois-v.-rev.-fred-lenczycki---- Corpus classification: legal-case-archive; evidentiary role: background-reference. SHA-256 5e3c2bff259d8952f5657e273e5829d36cf8f5741d57888f30dfb7fa573d3c26
Retrieval
2026-07-20 · Preserved
Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger

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