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Priest Denies Sex Abuse Charges

Nirshan Perera

A priest on trial for allegedly sexually abusing a 19-year-old woman he was supposed to counsel will get to tell his side of the story on Monday.

Mokesh Narine Prashad has denied drugging and fondling a parishioner of his small Hindu temple in Queens, New York, in an incident which occurred over two years ago. His attorney will seek to prove that the teen actually attempted to seduce the 35-year-old priest, and then invented the story when he rejected her advances.

The Queens District Attorney's Office, however, painted a different picture when the trial began on Tuesday.

Prosecutors said the girl's mother, who went to the temple on a semi-regular basis, had asked Prashad to give her daughter spiritual guidance. Instead, the priest quizzed her about her sexual experiences and advised her to sleep with him. He also gave her a drink that appeared to be drugged.

In her testimony on Wednesday, the girl said she woke up naked in bed with the priest. She fled his home and stumbled through the door of a nearby shop, distraught, disheveled and crying. The store owner immediately called 911.

"The specific charge is sex abuse in the first degree for forcibly touching her breasts and vagina," Prosecutor John Carroll explained. "There was no penetration so there is no rape charge."

In New York, the crime of sex abuse carries a maximum sentence of 7 years. Given the nature of charge, Carroll hopes the jury will find his argument convincing.

"In any case that involves the victimization of a woman, there is that whole element of power involved," he said. "Calling something a sex crime is really a misnomer because that's not what it's about."

"When a priest victimizes someone who is a member of his congregation, he has an extra advantage because that person places an extra amount of trust in him," he added. "There is something diabolical about it when you have that type of power dynamic: The betrayal of trust involved is very acute."

Carroll said a number of factors forced the delay in prosecuting the case.

"There was a lot of negotiation involved," he said. "There was also change of DAs at one point and at least one change of defense attorneys."

Prashad's temple has a congregation of about 50 people. Services are held in the basement of a plain brick three-story building on 127th Street in Richmond Hill.

According to Carroll, the temple's congregation has stood behind its priest for the most part.

"Given his protestations of innocence, and the fact that the victim was not a long-standing member of the church, I imagine they are firmly behind him," he said. The victim, who was born in the United States, had recently moved back into her parents's home.

Prashad, a Greencard holder, has no prior criminal record in the United States.

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