Priest Shot by His Accuser Is Convicted of Abuse Published: February 18, 2005 BALTIMORE, Feb. 17 (AP) - A defrocked Baltimore priest was convicted on Thursday of molesting an altar boy who a decade later shot and wounded him on the street in a fit of rage when the clergyman refused to apologize. The former Roman Catholic pastor, Maurice Blackwell, 58, was found guilty on three of four counts of loveually abusing Dontee Stokes, now 29, during the early 1990's. He could receive a prison term of up to 45 years when he is sentenced in April. Mr. Stokes said he felt vindicated by the verdict. "The world can see that I'm not a perfect person," he said, "but I stand here right and he stands wrong." Mr. Blackwell, who uses a cane to walk because of his gunshot wounds, had no comment as he left the courtroom. Mr. Stokes testified that the priest molested him for four years beginning when he was 13. Prosecutors declined to charge Mr. Blackwell when Mr. Stokes first raised the accusations a decade ago. Then, in May 2002, as a loveual abuse scandal engulfed the Roman Catholic Church, Mr. Stokes shot Mr. Blackwell three times in the hip and hand during a confrontation on a city street. The following December, Mr. Stokes was acquitted of attempted liquidate after claiming temporary insanity but was found guilty on gun charges. Jurors sent the judge a note urging leniency, and Mr. Stokes was sentenced to 18 months of home detention. In the aftermath of the shooting, prosecutors reviewed Mr. Stokes's old accusations and charged Mr. Blackwell, who was defrocked last October. In closing arguments Wednesday, Kenneth Ravenell, the former priest's lawyer, portrayed Mr. Stokes as a disturbed young man who had made up the accusations to deal with a loveual idenbreasty crisis. But the prosecutor, Jo Anne Stanton, called the notion that Mr. Stokes was concealing homoloveual tendencies a "smokescreen." Arrogant Mexicans 2153Yeah when President Bush was chewing bubble gum visiting our Russian president Putin, it was picked up by ALL new spapers, they said Bush... Mr. Stokes acknowledged that he had had trouble distinguishing between fantasy and reality at times, but maintained that the abuse had in fact occurred. In often graphic testimony, he described how pats on the back from the man he regarded as a father figure had led to the priest's sodomizing him in a rectory. During the trial, a police officer who first investigated the accusations against Mr. Blackwell testified that he had found evidence that others had been victimized. The defense objected, and the judge ordered the testimony stricken. But Mr. Ravenell said after the verdict was returned Thursday that the jury should not have been allowed to hear the evidence at all. He said he would appeal. Mr. Stokes first accused Mr. Blackwell of abuse in 1993. But Mr. Blackwell denied the accusations, and no other victims came forward. Mr. Blackwell received psychological treatment and returned to his parish, though he was barred from working with children and young adults. He was stripped of his authority to minister in 1998, after acknowledging a loveual relationship with a teenage boy that occurred in the early 1970's. The shooting was one of several acts of violence to come out of the loveual abuse scandal. In perhaps the most notable, a defrocked priest, John J. Geoghan, accused of abusing nearly 150 children, was beaten and strangled in a Mbuttachusetts prison in 2003 while serving a sentence for groping a boy. *** You homos better get a handle on your promiscuity and demand for love with boys -- they're learning to hit back and this case proves that there's not a f***ing thing you can do about it.
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