Priest Convicted in Retrial of Sexually Abusing Boy

A former priest whose child sex abuse conviction was overturned on appeal has been found guilty of the same crime during his retrial.

Jurors took less than an hour Thursday to find the Rev. Thomas Teczar guilty of raping and molesting a then 11-year-old boy in Ranger in the 1990s.

Ranger is about 90 miles west of Fort Worth.

Teczar was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2007, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported. But the 11th Court of Appeals overturned his conviction on three counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child and indeceny with a child.

The court said a man who said Teczar abused him should not have been allowed to testify as an expert on the sexual abuse of children, the newspaper reported.

Teczar faces up to life in prison.

The Fort Worth Catholic Diocese had assigned Teczar to work mostly unsupervised, despite his history of sexual misconduct in the Diocese of Worcester, Mass.

The Fort Worth diocese has asked the Vatican to defrock Teczar.

The diocese has paid about $6 million in civil settlements to six of Teczar's victims in Texas. Other victims in Massachusetts also have received settlements.

Copyright The Associated Press
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