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  Prosecutors, Diocese Mum on Details
Ex-Priest's File: the Record Was Seized during the Execution of a Search Warrant in January

The Press-Enterprise [California]
July 20, 2005

Riverside County prosecutors decided Wednesday not to discuss details of an agreement they reached with the Diocese of San Bernardino over a defrocked priest's personnel file, which was seized by authorities in January.

The decision not to release details came during a meeting of Riverside County district attorney's officials, spokeswoman Ingrid Wyatt said. Diocesan officials did not participate in the meeting, she said.

The Rev. Howard Lincoln, spokesman for the million-member diocese, encompassing Riverside and San Bernardino counties, said the diocese is also not discussing the accord.

The file, which remains sealed before a Riverside County judge, was confiscated Jan. 25 when authorities served a search warrant at the diocese's San Bernardino headquarters as part of their investigation into Jes?s Armando Dominguez, a former priest now facing 58 child-molestation charges.

Diocesan lawyers contested the search warrant, the first ever served on the diocese's offices, saying it violated federal and state law and that some of the seized records are privileged.

Last week, prosecutors and an attorney for the diocese were scheduled to argue in court about whether the file should be returned unopened to the diocese. Instead, prosecutors and a diocesan attorney spent three hours behind closed doors in Riverside County Superior Court Judge Russell Schooling's chambers without the judge being present.

Court records indicate the two sides reached an agreement, but Schooling ordered it sealed.

No additional court hearings are scheduled.

Dominguez, 56, is accused of sexually abusing two teenage boys at Catholic churches in Coachella and Perris in the late 1980s.

He is believed to have fled to Mexico. Dominguez, who quit the priesthood in 2000, worked in the diocese from 1978 to 1993.

 
 

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