Written by Greg Moran
SAN DIEGO — A Roman Catholic priest was sentenced to three years of probation Friday by a San Diego Superior Court judge after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor battery charge for groping a woman who was visiting him in December.
Jose Alexis Davila, 53, was also ordered to complete 150 hours of community service and have no contact with the 20-year-old victim. He will also have to pay a fine of $200.
He is a priest at St. Jude’s Shrine of the West in San Diego’s Southcrest neighborhood. He entered the plea in front of Judge Jeffrey Fraser who immediately sentenced him.
Davila admitted that on Dec. 30 he unlawfully touched an intimate part of the victim’s body, according to a statement from the San Diego City Attorney’s Office.
He was charged in January with three counts of inappropriately touching the woman, who was visiting him at his home.
The woman immediately told her family and then the police about the incident after she returned home.
Davila turned himself in two days later to police. At his arraignment in San Diego Superior Court on Jan. 10, a crowd of about 50 people, many parishioners at the church, showed up in support of him.
A message left with his lawyer late Friday was not immediately returned.