UPDATED::Essex D.A wants former priest held as 'sexually dangerous' | masslive.com

UPDATE:: Former Massachusetts priest reindicted on Maine sex abuse charges

The York County grand jury has reindicted a former priest from Massachusetts who is accused of repeatedly sexually abusing two boys he brought to Maine in the 1980s.

Ronald Paquin now faces 31 counts of sexual abuse in York County. He was originally indicted in February on 29 counts of sexual abuse for acts he allegedly committed in the mid- to late 1980s when he brought the boys to Maine for “short-term stays,” Kennebunk Police Chief Craig Sanford said at the time Paquin was charged. Sanford would not say where the alleged abuse occurred, other than to describe it as “a seasonal location,” or provide any other information on the charges.

Paquin, 74, has been held at the York County Jail since he was arrested and formally charged in February.

Paquin, who was removed from the priesthood in 2002, was a key figure in the Massachusetts priest sex abuse scandal in the early 2000s and pleaded guilty in 2002 to repeatedly raping a Haverhill, Massachusetts, altar boy in the late 1980s and early 1990s, beginning when the boy was 12. Paquin was jailed in Massachusetts until 2015, when specialists said he no longer met the criteria to be considered sexually dangerous.

UPDATE:: Pedophile priest to be freed from jail

The Essex District Attorney's Office on Friday withdrew its petition to hold defrocked Haverhill priest Ronald H. Paquin as a sexually dangerous person. Neither of the experts who examined him found him "sexually dangerous," therefore, the District Attorney's Office must, by law, withdraw its petition.

"Our contention is that Mr. Paquin poses a danger to the community," District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett said in a statement. "Unfortunately, we have no further legal options available to hold Mr. Paquin."

After pleading guilty in 2003 to raping and molesting an altar boy in Haverhill as many as 50 times from 1989 to 1992, Paquin was sentenced to 12 to 15 years at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Cedar Junction in Walpole.

The first Catholic priest convicted and jailed for sex abuse is about to be released from state prison.

Now 72-years-old, Ronald Paquin has served 12 of his 12 to 15 year sentence for raping and molesting an altar boy more than 50 times over a three-year period.

But, the Eagle Tribune reports that Essex County District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett says Paquin is still too dangerous to walk the streets. He wants the former priest held in Bridgewater State Hospital.

A spokeswoman for Blodgett said state law allows for petitions to hold released prisoners indefinitely as "sexually dangerous persons."

Essex D.A wants former priest held as 'sexually dangerous' | masslive.com