Time to face the music! Priest who abused a 14-year-old girl extradited to the United States

A Catholic priest was extradited to the United States from India in order to face sexual abuse charges from ten years ago.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Friar Joseph Jeyapaul, an Indian native, arrived in Minneapolis on November 17 after a New Delhi appeals court denied a motion to allow him to remain in India.

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Jeyapaul is charged with molesting a teenage girl when he worked in the Crookston diocese in 2004.

"We have been waiting for five years," said Karen Foss, a Roseau County attorney who was the first to seek Jeyapaul's extradition back in 2009.

"He was taken into custody (in India) in March of 2012, and has been filing motions to appeal the extradition since then."

The extradition of a priest is rare, said Patrick Wall, a former priest and an investigator for the law firm of Jeff Anderson, whom is representing the victim in the case.

"I know of no other priest who has been extradited to face criminal prosecution." Usually a foreign priest who commits sexual abuse against children is sent back to their home country.

The 59-year-old priest is expected to be jailed in Roseau County on November 19. He is accused of molesting a then 14-year-old girl multiple times while he was with the Blessed Sacrament Church in Greenbush.

The charges listed state that Jeyapaul masturbated in front of the girl, forced her to perform oral sex and sexually touched her. He threatened her and told her not to tell anyone.

The Crookston diocese first learned about the abuse in 2005. By then Jeyapaul had returned home to India to care for his mother he claimed. That year the diocese reported the abuse to the Sheriff's Office, and the county attorney filed the extradition papers in 2009.

In 2006 another Minnesota teen also accused Jeyapaul of abuse.

Wall believes that the reason Jeyapaul was successfully extradited is because the abuse victim was willing to fight the case, a willing prosecutor and willing Indian law enforcement.

The Crookston diocese says it supports the extradition.

"The Diocese of Crookston has publicly and repeatedly supported the process of returning Jeyapaul to Roseau to face the serious charges against him," said an attorney with the diocese, Susan Gaertner.

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