Defrocked Catholic priest convicted of sex crime

ST. LOUIS -- A defrocked Roman Catholic priest was convicted Thursday of exposing himself to three boys while serving as an elementary school counselor.

A St. Louis jury deliberated about three hours before finding James Beine, 61, guilty of all four felony counts of sexual misconduct involving a child.

Jurors recommended four years in prison on each count; Beine is scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 28.

Beine, also known as Mar James, has been in custody since his arrest in March 2002.

Earlier this month, he was sentenced to four years and nine months in federal prison on charges he possessed child pornography.

Ed Postawko, an assistant prosecutor, told jurors in closing statements Thursday that Beine exposed himself to the boys at Patrick Henry School during the 2000-01 school year for "perverse pleasure." At the time, the boys were in the third or fourth grades.

After the verdicts, Postawko told reporters "the four years does send the message that (jurors) considered (Beine's misconduct) serious and, in my opinion, a violation of their trust."

Beine attorney James Martin had argued his client should be acquitted, given inconsistencies in the boys' statements and the fact that school officials, after investigating the matter, only required school staffers to stop using students' restrooms.

Beine did not testify during the trial, which began Monday.

Beine was dismissed from the Roman Catholic priesthood in 1977 over allegations of sexual abuse. In the mid-1990s, the Archdiocese of St. Louis settled for $110,000 two lawsuits that alleged Beine sexually abused boys more than three decades earlier.

For more than a decade, he was a counselor at local elementary schools before resigning shortly before the state charges were issued in March 2002.

On Wednesday, one of the boys, now 12, testified he was "uncomfortable" that Beine used the urinal in a Patrick Henry boys' room even though the school's faculty and staff had their own restroom. The boy, then a fourth-grader, said he twice saw Beine standing far enough back from a urinal to expose himself to others in the room.

Former Beine jailmate William Longwell testified that after Beine's arrest last year, Beine told him he deliberately exposed himself to two boys at the school because he was "drawn to them for whatever reason."

Now imprisoned for burglary and sexual assault, Longwell initially had hoped that reporting Beine's statements would get him leniency, though Longwell said he never made a deal with prosecutors.

Sheree Lee, instructional coordinator at Patrick Henry, testified that while she listened to student complaints about Beine, she found some of what they said not to be credible.

On Beine's behalf, Patrick Henry principal Lloyd Washington testified he had been unable to pinpoint whether Beine did anything wrong.