ROME (CNS) — Italian police arrested former U.S. Salvatorian Father Joseph J. Henn 13 years after Italy’s highest court confirmed his extradition to the United States to face allegations of child sexual abuse in Maricopa County.
Michele Gentiloni, Henn’s attorney, said his client was taken into custody May 28 after trying to use his expired U.S. passport as identification to pick up some medicine he needed. A spokesman for the Carabinieri, the Italian police force that apprehended Henn, disputed that version of events, claiming instead that the priest had requested assistance at a city-run immigrant assistance center using a false name.
Henn was assigned by the Salvatorian order to serve at St. Mark Parish in Phoenix from 1978 to 1982. He was indicted on sexual abuse charges in 2003 and arrested in Rome in July 2005 after a request but disappeared before he could be extradited to the United States to stand trial.
“The Diocese of Phoenix is pleased to learn that authorities have located and apprehended former Salvatorian priest Joseph Henn in Italy,” said diocesan officials in a statement. “We support the efforts of the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office to extradite Henn and return him to the United States in order to face the criminal charges against him.”
Henn is identified on the Diocese of Phoenix website as a priest who has been removed from ministry due to sexual misconduct with a minor.
Child and Youth Protection
The Diocese of Phoenix is committed to providing a safe environment where it values and honors every individual as created in the image and likeness of God. Great efforts have been made to put systems into place to keep our young people safe, and we will continue to work in close cooperation with law enforcement to uphold the principles of accountability and justice.
We urge anyone who knows of or has been a victim of abuse to contact law enforcement. Additionally, the Diocese of Phoenix provides support services through its Office of Child and Youth Protection.
(602) 354-2396
The Diocese of Phoenix is committed to providing a safe environment where it values and honors every individual as created in the image and likeness of God. Great efforts have been made to put systems into place to keep our young people safe, and we will continue to work in close cooperation with law enforcement to uphold the principles of accountability and justice.
He was expelled from his order and removed from the priesthood in 2006 and is currently is in Rome’s Regina Coeli prison awaiting questioning, which must happen by June 3, his attorney told Catholic News Service May 31.
Fr. Jeff Wocken, U.S. provincial of the Salvatorians, confirmed to CNS that Henn had been removed from the order and the priesthood in 2006, and that he had left the Salvatorian headquarters before the extradition order could be carried out.
According to the 2004 annual report for the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, Henn was charged with 10 counts of child molestation, one count of attempted sexual contact with a minor, one count of attempted child molestation and two counts of sexual conduct with a minor.
Henn had been accused of molesting at least three boys under the age of 15 between 1979 and 1981 when he was living and working in Phoenix.
Gentiloni said he believes the 2006 extradition order is now null and void because “the police never moved to execute it.” At the time, officials at the Salvatorian order’s headquarters in Rome, where Henn was assigned when the abuse allegations were made, had said Henn fled after being placed under house arrest.
His lawyer said that was not true, but the Italian police never bothered to check, and they missed their 45-day period for notifying him of the extradition order.
“At the end of August 2006, the Italian Ministry of Justice, believing he was no longer present, issued an arrest warrant” for violating the terms of his house arrest, and it was on the basis of that warrant, not the extradition order, that police took him into custody 13 years later, the lawyer said.
A spokesman for the Carabinieri in Rome told CNS, “before he could be advised officially” that the court upheld the extradition request, “he disappeared and that is why he was declared a fugitive.”
Gentiloni had told CNS in 2005 that Henn “would accept facing trial in the United States because he is innocent, but he fears for his physical safety” in a U.S. prison given the climate created by the U.S. clerical abuse scandals.
An Italian court upheld the extradition request in January 2006 and the Supreme Court confirmed the decision six months later.
The Diocese of Phoenix is committed to providing a safe environment where it values and honors every individual as created in the image and likeness of God. Great efforts have been made to put systems into place to keep our young people safe, and we will continue to work in close cooperation with law enforcement to uphold the principles of accountability and justice.
We urge anyone who knows of or has been a victim of abuse to contact law enforcement. Additionally, the Diocese of Phoenix provides support services through its Office of Child and Youth Protection at (602) 354-2396 or at dphx.org/youth-protection.
— By Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service.
