St. Catharine’s Standard
11 August 2010
Cheryl Stepan, Standard Staff
A Roman Catholic priest pleaded guilty Tuesday to sexually assaulting a teenaged boy, after first pleading not guilty and sitting through three days of trial in which intimate details of his sexuality emerged.
Father James Kneale, 44, pleaded guilty to one count of sexual assault for performing oral sex on a 16-year-old boy in a Thorold church rectory in June 1985.
During his trial which began last week in Superior Court of Ontario in Welland, Kneale testified the incident was consensual and performed at the boy’s request.
But the victim — now 30 — told the court he passed out after a night of drinking and woke up to Kneale performing oral sex on him without his consent.
Justice Robert Abbey said it didn’t matter which version of events was true, because either way, the victim couldn’t have properly consented.
“On either version … the accused can be found guilty,” he said, adding Kneale couldn’t have a “genuine belief as to consent.”
Outside court, assistant Crown attorney Ron Brooks said Abbey would have been taking into account the victim’s age, and Kneale’s position of authority as a priest, among other things.
Kneale was also facing four other sexual assault charges involving the same boy and one count of indecent assault involving a 19-year-old male dating back to 1983. All of those charges were withdrawn Tuesday at the request of the Crown.
Kneale, who has served at St. Michael’s Church in Fort Erie, Holy Rosary in Thor-old and Our Lady of The Scapular in Niagara Falls and was chaplain at St. Catharines General Hospital, will be sentenced Sept. 3.
Outside court, the victim said he was “so angry, its unbelievable” at the way the charges against Kneale were resolved.
“He’s a sick, sick individual. He needs lots of help,” the Fort Erie man said of Kneale.
While he would have preferred to see the trial through to the end, he said it was therapeutic to take the stand and tell his story.
“There’s nothing I can do to put this behind me,” he said. But it’s helped … to know that I can sit up there and tell what’s happened to me.”
Kneale refused comment outside court. When asked if there was anything he wanted to say to the victim or his family, Kneale was whisked away by his lawyer.
Bishop John O’Mara, head of the Roman Catholic Diocese of St. Catharines, also declined to comment on the case or say what the church would do with Kneale’s employment until the criminal and civil matters have been resolved. Kneale has been on leave from Our Lady of The Scapular since his arrest in July 1997.
Both the Fort Erie man and another man are suing Kneale and the church for millions of dollars.
During three days of testimony, the court heard Kneale took nude photos of the teenaged victim, and kept detailed diaries of his memorable encounters with the boy, along with the more mundane events in his daily life.
The court also heard taped telephone conversations between Kneale and the victim, made in 1997 before the victim went to police.
On the tapes, Kneale and the victim have a discussion about the night of oral sex around the time of the victim’s 16th birthday.
In the case involving the 19-year-old former St. Catharines man, Kneale admitted to masturbating the man. But he said he had discussed his homosexuality with the man, and the man requested he perform the act.
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Priest discussed sex on recording: Roman Catholic pastor also found with photos of nude teenaged boy
St. Catharine’s Standard
11 August 1999
Cheryl Stepan, Standard Staff
A Roman Catholic priest took nude photographs of a teenaged boy and discussed performing oral sex on the boy in a tape recorded phone conversation, a courtroom heard Tuesday.
Father James Kneale, 44, is charged with five counts of sexual assault involving a Fort Erie teen and one count of indecent assault involving a St. Catharines teen over incidents which allegedly occurred between 1982 and 1985.
One of the alleged victims recorded phone conversations between himself and Kneale in April 1997 before going to police several months later.
In the recordings, played in Superior Court of Justice in Welland during the first day of Kneale’s trial, the Fort Erie man told Kneale he had suicidal thoughts. He said he wondered if it might be because Kneale had performed oral sex on him one night when he was around 16 and extremely intoxicated.The priest reassured him it wouldn’t affect his whole life.
Kneale, who was in court with a handful of supporters, admits some of the alleged incidents occurred, but maintains they were consensual.
The Fort Erie man, now 30, testified that when he was around 14, he became friends with Kneale, who was parish priest at St. Michael’s Church in Fort Erie. He said Kneale would buy him alcohol and let him stay over. He said he would often confide in Kneale about problems he was having with girls or his job.
He maintained his friendship with Kneale by way of phone conversations until 1997, when he says he began to recall other alleged incidents which occurred between himself and Kneale.
He told the court that on several occasions in the rectory at St. Michael’s, Kneale had massaged and fondled him.
He also said Kneale had taken nude and semi-nude photos of him when he was around 15. He said Kneale wanted to send the photos to a pornographic magazine in Montreal.
Police recovered the photos in Kneale’s home at the time of his arrest in 1997.
Assistant Crown attorney Ron Brooks asked the man why he didn’t stop Kneale from touching him.
“At that point, I thought a priest could do no wrong,” said the man.
He said he did tell his father about the alleged incident of oral sex shortly after it occurred. He said after that he didn’t see Kneale again for around a year, until Kneale called to ask him for forgiveness.
He explained he never meant to hurt me, what he did, he did out of love.”
He said he forgave Kneale because: “I wanted my friend back.”
Kneale’s lawyer, George Walker, is scheduled to cross-examine the man on his testimony today.
Another witness, a 35-year-old man who now lives in Buffalo, testified he became friends with Kneale as an altar boy when Kneale was a deacon at St. Alfred’s Church in St. Catharines.
He said when he was 19, Kneale invited him to spend a weekend with him at St. Michael’s in Fort Erie so they could hang out like they used to.
He said they went to dinner, then went back to the rectory and had a few drinks. When he went to bed, he said Kneale came into his bedroom, sat down on the bed and began to fondle him.
He said he was confused and scared and didn’t do anything because “something like this had never happened before.”
In cross-examination, Walker pointed out that the man has filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Kneale and the Roman Catholic Church
Walker suggested to the man that the incident was consensual, and that they had discussed Kneale’s confusion over his sexual orientation earlier on.
The man denied those suggestions.
Walker asked the man why he didn’t just get up and leave if it wasn’t consensual.
“Rather than get up and leave, you say to yourself, ‘I’m so scared I’m going to lay on this bed.’ “
The man said it was as if somebody had his tongue.
“It was like I was in a trance. I didn’t know what was happening to me.” Kneale has served at parishes in Niagara Falls, Thorold and Fort Erie and was formerly a chaplain at St. Catharines General Hospital.
Kneale has been on leave from Our Lady of the Scapular Church in Niagara Falls since his arrest in July 1997.
Kneale’s trial, before a judge without a jury, is likely to wrap up next week
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Legal jostling stalls priest’s trial: Lawyers in Kneale case go behind closed doors to discuss issue of consent
St. Catharines’s Standard
07 August 1999
Cheryl Stepan
After three days of testimony, the sexual assault trial of a Roman Catholic priest was suddenly put on hold Friday while lawyers for the parties involved went behind closed doors for lengthy discussions.
The case against Father James Kneale, 44, who is facing six sex charges for alleged incidents between 1982 and 1985, was adjourned until Tuesday.
The official reason given for the adjournment by Justice Robert Abbey was so that lawyers could consider the legal principles involved in the case.
Outside Superior Court of Justice in Welland, assistant Crown attorney Ron Brooks said the legal questions revolve around the issue of consent, and how it relates to a priest or person in a position of authority.
So far, one 30-year-old Fort Erie man has testified that when he was between the ages of 14 and 16, Kneale fondled him on several occasions and performed fellatio on him at least once.
He became friends with Kneale through the Catholic youth group at St. Michael’s Church in Fort Erie which Kneale led when he was pastor there.
A 35-year-old former St. Catharines man, who also got to know Kneale through the church, testified that when he was 19, Kneale masturbated him in the rectory in Fort Erie.
Kneale, an ordained priest since 1980, admits to that act, and an incident of oral sex with the Fort Erie man. However, he says the encounters were consensual and initiated by the boys.
He also admitted to taking nude photos of the Fort Erie man who was in his teens.
On Tuesday, Kneale pleaded not guilty to all six counts.
For hours throughout the day Friday, Kneale was busy talking to his lawyer, George Walker, while Brooks had discussions with one of the alleged victims. In between, Walker and Brooks met several times with Abbey.
Meanwhile, supporters of the Fort Erie man patiently waited around in the hallway for court to resume. Among them were the man’s parents and friends, former parishioners and members of a recently formed support group for male survivors of childhood sexual abuse.
The group, formed in November 1988 and run out of Niagara Region’s public health department, has around 10 members.
The Fort Erie man said he’s anxious for the trial to be over and said the delay made him “sick to my stomach.”
But he said a huge weight had already been rifted off his shoulders when he finished testifying Wednesday.
Kneale has served at parishes in Niagara Falls, Thorold and Fort Erie, and was a chaplain at St. Catharines General Hospital.
He has been on leave from Our Lady of Scapular Church in Niagara Falls since his arrest in July 1997.
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Priest admits homosexual behaviour: Says two male accusers were willing participants in sex acts in early ’80s
St. Catharine’s Standard
06 August 1999
Cheryl Stepan, Standard Staff
Taking the stand in his own defence, a Catholic priest told a courtroom that he discussed his homosexuality with his two male accusers and performed sexual acts on them at their request.
Father James Kneale, 44, admitted that in the early ’80s, he performed oral sex on a Fort Erie teen who was around 16 at a church rectory in Thorold, and masturbated a 19-year-old St. Catharines man at a rectory in Fort Erie.
Both teens requested the acts, Kneale said Thursday in Superior Court of Justice in Welland.
In cross-examination, assistant Crown attorney Ron Brooks asked why Kneale would consent even if the teens did ask.
“You’re 27, he’s 15, perhaps just turned 16, and you think that’s OK?” Brooks asked, pointing out that the teens likely thought of Kneale as a big brother.
“I never said it was OK,” Kneale replied calmly, adding it was against his better judgment.Those incidents make up two of the allegations of sexual assault against Kneale. He’s facing four other counts of sexual assault on the Fort Erie teen for fondling incidents which allegedly occurred between 1983 and 1985, beginning when the teen was 14.
Kneale said Thursday the teen is lying about those incidents. He has pleaded not guilty to all six charges.
He also denied plying the teens with alcohol prior to the alleged incidents. They testified he had. The Fort Erie teen said he was passed out and woke up to Kneale performing fellatio on him.
Kneale said he became friends with the teens when he was pastor at St. Michael’s Church in Fort Erie. He said he would talk to them on the phone and they would go out for dinner.
But Brooks said Kneale was more than just a friend to the teens around the time of the sexual encounters. He said Kneale was also acting as a parish priest and counsellor.
“Whether you liked it or not … you became a father figure,” Brooks said. Kneale disagreed, insisting they thought of each other as friends. Kneale entered the priesthood in 1980.
Under questioning from his lawyer George Walker, Kneale told the court that at the time, he suspected he was homosexual but it didn’t matter because there is nothing preventing gay men from becoming priests.
He said he didn’t become a priest to hide from his sexuality.
“My desire to become a priest was my love of God and my desire to help others — it still is,” he said, adding he was “sincere in response to God’s call.”
Kneale told the court that following the incident with the Fort Erie teen, he attended counselling at Southdowne in Aurora, a facility for Catholic priests, to discover his “spirituality and sexuality.”
Thursday was the third day of the judge-without-a-jury trial.
On Tuesday, court heard taped phone conversations between Kneale and the alleged victim from Fort Erie.
The Fort Erie man, now 30, taped the conversations in 1997 before going to police.
In the conversations, he and Kneale discuss the time they had oral sex in 1985.
Kneale also refers to two other sexual encounters between himself and the man.
Kneale told the court Thursday he was talking about two consensual acts which took place in the following years.
The Fort Erie man also asked Kneale on the tapes about some photographs Kneale had taken of him when he was a teen.
In court Thursday, Kneale admitted to taking the nude photos.
He said the photos were taken at the request of the teen, who wanted to send them to a pornographic magazine.
He was always very boastful about his sexual prowess… and the size of his penis,” Kneale told court Thursday.
Police found the photos, along with some gay male magazines and adult videos, when they searched Kneale’s house before his arrest in July 1997.
At the time, Kneale was pastor at Our Lady of The Scapular Church in Niagara Falls. He has been on leave since then.
Brooks’ cross-examination of Kneale will continue today. The trial is expected to wrap up sometime next week.
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Sex with priest ‘ consensual”: Lawyer alleges accuser was willing participant in oral sex with pastor
St. Catharine’s Standard
05 August 1999
Cheryl Stepan
Over and over, the lawyer defending a Roman Catholic priest on trial for sex offences suggested to one of the priest’s accusers that he was a willing participant in oral sex, not a victim.
“I suggest that you engaged in consensual sex by allowing Father Jim Kneale to perform fellatio,” George Walker told the 30-year-old Fort Erie man during cross-examination Wednesday — the second day of testimony in a trial of Father James Kneale, 44.
The man said the act, which allegedly occurred around his 16th birthday, was not consensual as far as he knew.
“I really couldn’t tell you,” he said, adding he had passed out from all the alcohol he’d consumed that night. He testified earlier that he woke up to find Kneale performing oral sex on him.
Walker also suggested the man was lying about the other incidents of sexual assault he says occurred.
“I suggest that you didn’t tell your father about (the incidents) because those incidents didn’t take place,” Walker said in Superior Court of Justice in Welland.
The seemingly unshaken man replied: “I believe there’s facts that show otherwise.“
Kneale, 44, is charged with five counts of sexual assault involving the Fort Erie man who was between the ages of 14 and 16 at the time of the alleged incidents from 1983 to 1985. Kneale is also facing one charge of indecent assault for allegedly fondling a former St. Catharines man in 1982, when the man was 19. That man testified Tuesday.
Kneale has pleaded not guilty to all counts.
He was pastor at St. Michael’s Church in Fort Erie and at Holy Rosary Church in Thorold at the time of the alleged incidents. He was at Our Lady of The Scapular in Niagara Falls when he was arrested in 1997, and has been on leave from the church since then.
On Tuesday, the Fort Erie man testified that in addition to the one incident of oral sex which allegedly occurred in 1985, Kneale massaged and fondled him on several other occasions.
He also told the court Kneale took nude and semi-nude photographs of him as a teen.
He said Kneale would take him for dinner, buy him alcohol and have him spend nights at the rectory. They maintained a friendship on and off until 1997, the man said.
Before going to police in 1997, the Fort Erie man taped phone conversations between himself and Kneale in which Kneale discussed the night Kneale performed oral sex on him.
On the tapes, played in court, Kneale said it was the man who initiated the act.
During his cross-examination Wednesday, Walker pointed out that during the discussion regarding who initiated the act, the tape stopped recording.
“I suggest you shut the tape off… because you didn’t like what you were hearing,” he said to the man.
The man said he didn’t shut the tape off — he said it stopped recording briefly because the tape ran out.
Walker also questioned the way in which the man remembered events.
The man testified that initially he only recalled the one incident of oral sex with Kneale — an incident which he told his father about shortly after it occurred. He said he didn’t remember the other incidents until after a phone conversation with Kneale in February of 1997, in which they discussed the sex abuse scandal at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.
After Walker finished hours of cross-examination, the man’s parents took the stand.
They recounted the day Kneale came to their homes in 1986 to apologize for the incident of oral sex between himself and their son the previous year.
Walker asked the father if Kneale specifically told him that his son had not consented to receiving oral sex.
“He didn’t admit it in so many words, but I know that’s what happened,” the father said.
Kneale, accompanied by two other priests and his mother, is expected to take the stand in the judge-alone trial today.
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Sexual assault trial of priest delayed till August
St. Catharines Standard
20 April 1999.
WELLAND – The trial of a Roman Catholic priest accused of several sex-related offences was adjourned Monday until August.
Rev. James Kneale, 44, was scheduled to begin his trial this week.
The accused made a brief court appearance with his lawyer George Walker who asked that the matter be adjourned to Aug. 3. No reason was given for the delay.
The case, which is being heard by judge alone, is expected to last about a week.
Kneale was charged in July 1997 with five counts of sexual assault following an investigation into allegations involving a Fort Erie, boy between 1983 and 1985.
In September 1997, Niagara Regional Police laid an additional charge of sexual assault stemming from an investigation into alleged incidents involving a 17-year-old Thorold teen between January 1980 and December 1981.
At that time, Kneale was the parish priest at St. Michael’s Church in Fort Erie.
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Priest to stand trial
St. Catharines Standard
11 April 1998
A Roman Catholic priest has been ordered to stand trial for alleged sexual assaults on two teenaged Niagara boys in the 1980s.
Father James Kneale, 43, is charged with five counts of sexual assault and one count of indecent assault over alleged incidents in 1981 and 1985.
Kneale, who has served at parishes in Niagara Falls, Thorold and Fort Erie and was formerly a chaplain at St. Catharines General Hospital, was committed for trial Thursday after a preliminary hearing in Ontario Court provincial division in St. Catharines.
Evidence can’t be reported due to a publication ban. A trial date has not been set.
The incidents are alleged to have occurred at the rectories of Holy Rosary Church in Thorold and St. Michael’s Church in Fort Erie.
Kneale has been on leave from Our Lady of the Scapular Church in Niagara Falls since his arrest last July.