Port Charlotte priest was recently arrested in Florida after being placed on administrative leave one year ago with the Diocese of Venice. Father Leo Patrick Riley, 68, worked in at least 16 parishes in his home Diocese in Dubuque, Iowa, and in 2002, when predator priests began to be under great scrutiny, he moved to Florida and later began working in the Venice diocese. Floridians might have learned this much sooner, but Venice Bishop Frank Dewane is one of several US bishops who refuse to disclose the names of the child molesting clerics in his jurisdiction.
According to the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office, Fr. Riley was arrested on April 24 and faces five capital sexual battery charges that allegedly took place in the 1980s when Riley was a priest in Dubuque, Iowa.
→In 2014, Fr. Leo Riley of the Dubuque Archdiocese was accused of sexually abusing a boy about a decade earlier.
→In 2015, a church…
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