Retired Orange County Catholic priest arrested in alleged molestation

Retired Orange County Catholic priest arrested in alleged molestation
Denis Lyons is held on suspicion of molesting a boy in the 1990s while assigned to a Costa Mesa church.
By Paloma Esquivel
July 22, 2009
A retired Roman Catholic priest from Orange County who escaped prosecution six years ago for allegedly molesting a teenage boy has been arrested on suspicion of molesting another boy in the 1990s, authorities said Tuesday.

Denis Lyons, 75, of Seal Beach was arrested Monday afternoon while he was playing cards at a community center near his home in the Leisure World retirement community, prosecutors said.


Lyons faces four felony counts of lewd acts on a child under the age of 14 and a sentencing enhancement for substantial sexual conduct with a child, which would make him subject to a mandatory prison sentence, according to prosecutors. The abuse occurred between 1992 and 1995 while Lyons was assigned to St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Costa Mesa, prosecutors said.

Criminal charges in an earlier case against Lyons were dropped after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003 invalidated as unconstitutional a California law that had extended the statute of limitations on child molestation to include decades-old cases.
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Retired Orange County Catholic priest arrested in alleged molestation