Nicaraguan judge sentences priest to 49 years for rape of 14-y-o girl
Published:Friday | September 2, 2022 | 6:32 PM
MEXICO CITY (AP) — A judge in Nicaragua sentenced a Roman Catholic priest to 49 years in prison Friday for the rape of a 14-year-old girl.
Judge Edén Aguilar Castro sentenced Reverend José Leonardo Urbina to 24 years in prison on two counts of abuse and 25 years for one count of rape.
However, Aguilar Castro ruled that Urbina would serve only 30 years.
Nicaraguan law limits maximum sentences in most cases to 30 years.
Urbina served as a priest at the Perpetuo Socorro parish in the town of Boaco, 55 miles northeast of the capital, Managua.
He was arrested in July on a complaint from the victim's mother.
The Diocese of Grenada expressed “deep pain and suffering” in a statement about the sentence, and called on the faithful to “continue praying for our jailed priests.”
In June, a parish priest in the southern town of Nandaime was sentenced to two years in prison for supposedly assaulting a woman, but she later retracted the accusation and was accused of perjury.
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