Father Nicholas Hughes arrested

COLUMBUS—In the case of the arrest of Father Nicholas Hughes, interim priest in Colum­bus and mem­ber also serv­ing at the St. Theodore House on Port­land Way South, Galion, the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office reports he was arraigned late last week with a bond of $100,000. There is no indict­ment at press time. There have been no reports of mis­con­duct as yet, but the FCSO is ask­ing for any infor­ma­tion. The Galion Police Depart­ment also reported there have been no reports or com­plaints in this mat­ter.
Father Nicholas Hughes has been accused of going to meet young boys at a hotel for sex. He was arrested Sept. 19 in Colum­bus on a sting oper­a­tion involv­ing con­tact with an under­cover agent pos­ing as young boys. Accord­ing to other news sources (10TV.com, The Colum­bus Dis­patch ) he was charged with attempted rape and attempted unlaw­ful sex­ual mis­con­duct and is now under house arrest.
Accord­ing to FCSO, if no one comes for­ward with evi­dence or reports of abuse the case will be dropped. Attor­ney Joe Scott is rep­re­sent­ing the Father.

Tags: father nicholas, hughes, st. theodore

Posted by Matt Echelberry on Sep 26 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

1 Comment for “Father Nicholas Hughes arrested”

1. 

   Judy Jones

   October 1, 2012 - 9:12 pm

   Let’s hope that every per­son who saw, sus­pected or may have been harmed by Father Patrick Nicholas Hughes, will find the courage and strength to speak up and call police, not the church officials.

   Some­thing to keep in mind–

   Child preda­tors are very cun­ning and manip­u­la­tive. They know every trick on how to groom, threaten, lie, and put the fear of god into their vic­tims and some­times even their fam­ily members.

   They also appear to do a lot of goods things, they can be very charis­matic and you may think they would never harm a child. They have to be this way, in order to not get caught and to con­tinue to abuse

   Sex­ual preda­tors are often pow­er­ful and well-loved. It would be com­fort­ing if those who preyed on the vul­ner­a­ble were obvi­ous social mis­fits whose appear­ance would some­how set off alarm bells and give us the willies or the creeps. They rarely do. Usu­ally, preda­tors are among the last peo­ple we would sus­pect of sex­u­ally vio­lat­ing oth­ers. At a party, the preda­tor isn’t some odd­ball sit­ting alone in a cor­ner because oth­ers feel uncom­fort­able with him. Most often, the preda­tor is the guy throw­ing the party.

   We must over­come the dan­ger­ous myth that because some­one is suc­cess­ful or warm or car­ing, he or she couldn’t have done that!
   Also, we must stop think­ing that because a man is old, that some­how he’s auto­mat­i­cally safe. It’s just irre­spon­si­ble to endan­ger kids by assum­ing an adult is harm­less sim­ply because he or she may be los­ing hair, wear­ing glasses, using hear­ing aids or walk­ing with a cane. These can be signs of advanc­ing age, but they are not signs that an indi­vid­ual is safe around kids.

   It is extremely rare that a child preda­tor has only one vic­tim. Hope­fully if any­one has knowl­edge or may have been harmed by priest, teacher, coach, bishop, min­is­ter, rel­a­tive, etc, no mat­ter how long ago the abuse hap­pened, they will con­tact the police.

   Also keep in mind your silence only hurts, and by speak­ing up there is a chance for heal­ing, expos­ing the truth, and there­fore pro­tect­ing others.

   Judy Jones, SNAP Mid­west Asso­ciate Direc­tor, 636–433-2511
   snapjudy@gmail.com
   “Sur­vivors Net­work of those Abused by Priests” and all clergy.

Comments are closed