US

Former Catholic Priest Imprisoned For 20 Years After Pleading Guilty To Raping Boys

(Shutterstock/ peacepix)

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
Joshua Gill Religion Reporter
Font Size:

A former Catholic priest was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment in South Carolina after pleading guilty to raping middle school-aged boys 40 years ago.

Wayland Yoder Brown, 76, pleaded guilty to and was sentenced Tuesday for sexually abusing boys at a middle school in South Carolina. Brown reportedly raped his victims while wearing his priestly collar, forced them to pray the rosary with him afterward and threatened them with damnation if they reported what he had done to them. (RELATED: Virginia Launches State-Level Investigation Of The Catholic Church)

“He not only violated the trust of children, but violated their faith. He used the Catholic faith against them,” Solicitor Duffie Stone said after Brown pleaded guilty, according to Crux Now.

A Catholic priest carrying rosary beads (Shutterstock/Africa Studio)

A Catholic priest carrying rosary beads (Shutterstock/Africa Studio)

Brown had already served five years of a 10-year prison sentence in Maryland for molesting boys in the 1970s. The latest charges against Brown came as the result of a lawsuit that a victim filed against the Diocese of Savannah. The diocese settled the lawsuit, in which the victim claimed Brown raped him while he was a student at St. James Catholic School, for $4.5 million.

Authorities could not criminally prosecute Brown for the rapes he allegedly committed in Georgia, as they had passed the state’s statute of limitations, but investigators discovered that he had also raped the victim and other students from the school in South Carolina, where there is no statute of limitations on such a crime.

Authorities determined that Brown sexually assaulted the students in a church and in an abandoned train depot in Hardeeville, South Carolina.

South Carolina authorities charged brown with nine counts of sexual misconduct with children, for which he faced up to 210 years in jail. Brown took a plea deal, however, which lowered his sentence to 20 years in exchange for a guilty plea and his cooperation in telling authorities anything he knows about instances of abuse in the Diocese of Savannah and other places. While 20 years is a significantly lesser sentence, Stone said he would still likely die behind bars.

“I do not expect the defendant to live through that sentence,” Stone said. “I think it is appropriate he lives the rest of his life in the South Carolina Department of Corrections.”

Chris Templeton, one of the survivors from St. James Catholic School, said while he is not certain about what Brown knows concerning other instances of abuse, he urged others to come forward with any information they had. Templeton also demanded that if other clergymen knew of Brown’s abuses that they be brought to justice as well for doing nothing.

“Hold them just as responsible as the man who raped me,” he said.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel