Former New Mexico priest gets 30 years for child sexual abuse

FILE PHOTO: Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, holds a sign during the protest outside the venue of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) general assembly in Baltimore, Maryland, US, November 12, 2018. [Reuters]

A former Roman Catholic priest who fled to Morocco before he was returned to the United States and convicted of sexually abusing an altar boy in New Mexico in the 1990s was sentenced on Friday to 30 years in prison, prosecutors said.

US District Judge Martha Vazquez imposed the sentence in Albuquerque federal court on Arthur Perrault, 81, a onetime Air Force chaplain and colonel, US Attorney John Anderson said in a statement.