RI Catholic Priest Gets Six Years On Child Porn Charges

December 13, 2023 Crime, Religion

The Providence Journal reports:

Calling his crimes egregious and an enormous violation of the trust to the parishioners he once served, a federal judge on Wednesday sentenced a former Roman Catholic priest to serve six years in prison.

“I’m strongly inclined to give you more than that,” U.S. District Court Judge William E. Smith said in sentencing Rev. James Ward Jackson, 68.

Smith exceeded the five-year term agreed to Assistant U.S. Attorney John McAdams and Jackson’s lawyer, John Calcagni, in sentencing Jackson, a former pastor at St. Mary’s Catholic Parish on Broadway, to 72 months for receiving child pornography.

Catholic site The Pillar reported yesterday:

In a plea for a sentence of five years on child pornography charges, Fr. James Jackson told a federal judge that he accepted responsibility for his crimes and was sorry, and that he had been sexually abused himself as a minor. “Mr. Jackson channeled that trauma and addressed it by pursuing and viewing child pornography. His doing so resulted in the development of an addiction to these obscene visual depictions, which explains how and why he comes before this Court.”

“The vile sin into which I fell, and for which I am guilty, has caused immeasurable harm,” Jackson explained in a handwritten letter dated Aug. 6, and reportedly sent to his religious provincial superior. The priest told the court that he has been “involuntarily removed from the priesthood but has not abandoned his faith.” Jackson told the judge that his conduct was “hypocritical” and “completely unbecoming of a devout Catholic and more so, a clergyman.”

Jackson is already in jail because he violated his pre-trial release conditions by possessing….child porn. My November 2021 report on his arrest is here. Since that post preceded the launch of our running tally, he joined our running tally upon his guilty plea in June 2023.



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