DC Priest Sentenced In Child Sex Abuse Case Found Guilty Of Sexually Abusing Adult

WASHINGTON, DC — A D.C. judge on Monday found a Catholic priest guilty of sexually abusing an adult woman while he worked at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart church in Northwest D.C., according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Urbano Vazquez, 49, of Washington, D.C., was found guilty of one count of misdemeanor sexual abuse, after a one-day trial before Judge Juliet McKenna in D.C. Superior Court.

After hearing a victim impact statement following the verdict, McKenna sentenced Vazquez to 180 days of incarceration, the maximum possible sentence. Vazquez is already serving a 15-year sentence on four felony counts of child sexual abuse that he was convicted of in 2019.

In April 2017, during a confession in a room in the parish rectory building at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart complex in D.C., Vazquez twice touched the adult parishioner’s breast, over her sweater, without her consent, prosecutors said.

Following the incident, the adult parishioner disclosed what happened to her mother, who encouraged her to stay away from Vazquez. In 2018, when reports came out that the defendant was accused of sexually molesting child parishioners, the woman disclosed the abuse to another priest at the church, who notified law enforcement, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia said in a news release Tuesday.

ALSO SEE: DC Priest Sentenced For Sex Abuse; List Of VA, MD Accused Priests

Vazquez was indicted on the charge at the same time he was indicted on the child sexual abuse counts. The cases involving the child victims and the adult proceeded separately.

In August 2019, a jury found Vazquez guilty on one count of second-degree child sexual abuse of a 13-year-old girl, and two counts of second-degree child sexual abuse and one count of misdemeanor sexual abuse of a child against a 9-year-old girl.

Vazquez committed the abuse between 2015 and 2017, prosecutors said. He was arrested in September 2018 and was sentenced in the case in November 2019.

Vazquez served his diaconate internship at Our Lady of the Mountains Parish (Western Maryland) from 2013 to 2014 and later celebrated Mass there on a few occasions. He was on a list of Catholic priests credibly accused of sexual abuse against children that was released in late 2018, including the Baltimore archdiocese.

In October 2018, the D.C. Superior Court Division’s Sex Offense and Domestic Violence Section and the Victim Witness Assistance Unit of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia launched a hotline and email address for survivors to report child sexual abuse by clergy.

Survivors of sexual abuse by a clergy member that took place in a house of worship, school or other location in the District of Columbia can call the Clergy Abuse English and Spanish Reporting Line at 202-252-7008 or send an email to USADC.ReportClergyAbuse@usdoj.gov.