12/21/18 - News
Hicks Johnson Client Tells Story of Priest Abuse to the Houston Chronicle
The firm represents one of three people who have accused Manuel La Rosa-Lopez, a former priest, of sexual abuse. La Rosa-Lopez, who has pleaded not guilty, has been indicted on two counts of indecency with a child. The third accuser, who tells his story to the Houston Chronicle in the article below, is represented by Adam Dinnell.
By Nicole Hensley
The headline caught the 37-year-old Army veteran’s eye. Swiping through the results of his fantasy football league, he spied the news on his phone that a Richmond priest had been arrested for decades-old claims that he molested two children at a church in Conroe.
Though he barely recognized the gray-haired man in the Montgomery County booking photo as the young Peruvian seminary student from his days as a 12-year-old altar boy at St. Thomas More Catholic Church in Houston, the news report from September ripped open years of guilt and shame he had long buried.
“My heart just broke,” the Houston-area man told the Houston Chronicle, asking that he not be identified.
Within days, he had contacted the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office — becoming the third accuser to step forward with allegations of molestation against Manuel La Rosa-Lopez, now a priest at the center of a growing investigation that has engulfed the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston.
Read more at the Chronicle