Saturday, September 21, 2013
Associated Press
CINCINNATI
A priest charged with taking a 10-year-old boy to West Virginia for sex more than two decades ago was found guilty Friday.
Federal jurors in Cincinnati found Robert Poandl guilty of one count of transporting a minor in interstate commerce with the intent of engaging him in sex, a charge that carries a possible sentence of up to 10 years in prison.
Poandl, from the suburban Cincinnati-based Glenmary Home Missioners, took the boy to Spencer, W.Va., on Aug. 3, 1991, and raped him while visiting a church there, prosecutors said. Poandl’s attorney, Stephen Wenke, told jurors the allegations were false and denied the boy was even on the trip.
The accuser, who’s now in his 30s, waited until 2009 before telling law- enforcement officials in West Virginia that he’d been abused. Poandl was indicted there on charges accusing him of sexually abusing the boy, but a judge dismissed those charges in 2010.
The trial began Monday after U.S. District Judge Michael Barrett had earlier rejected a motion to dismiss the case over a statute of limitations.