Chez Chesler

Retired priest Desilets guilty of sex abuse If Rev. Paul Desilets had remained in Massachusetts instead of retiring to Canada in 1984, it would have been too late to prosecute him for molesting altar boys between 1978 and 1984. Instead he was extradited from Canada in 2005 and entered a guilty plea. Similarly Father James Porter was prosecuted in 1992 for bad acts committed 25 years prior, because he had left Massachusetts in 1967 for New Mexico and Minnesota. In 1992 his lawyers unsuccessfully argued that "the statute should distinguish between defendants who leave the state specifically to avoid prosecution and others." Why is there a statute of limitations at all? I can see that in an earlier age it would have been easier to avoid prosecution by being elsewhere, Canada and Minnesota are no longer as far away as they once were. Prosecution of these two priests would have been just as easy (or difficult) in the intervening years as prosecution of any of the other accused priests, or any other accused persons, who remained in Massachusetts. Any reasons for the statute of limitations apply just as much intrastate as interstate.