Police: Pennsylvania priest caught with pantless 15-year-old on college campus

(CNN) -- A Catholic priest in Pennsylvania
has been charged with molesting a teenage
boy after police said he was found in a car
on a college campus with a 15-year-old
who was wearing no pants, according to a
police criminal complaint filed Friday in
Lackawanna County.
The Rev. W. Jeffrey Paulish was charged
with one felony count of involuntary deviate
sexual intercourse and one felony count of
unlawful contact with a minor after
Dunmore police say they found him and
the boy on Thursday in a car on the
Worthington Scranton campus of Penn
State University, according to the complaint.
Paulish, 56, of Scranton, was also charged
with three misdemeanor counts -- indecent
contact with a person under 16, indecent
exposure and corruption of a minor. He is
being held at the Lackawanna County jail
on $50,000 bail.
Dunmore police officers say they
discovered Paulish and the boy after
responding to a call of a suspicious vehicle,
according to an arrest warrant affidavit
filed with the court.
Allegedly Paulish told police he was at the
campus working on his homily when he
met the teen, who he said was in emotional
distress, and began counseling him.
According to the affidavit, he later admitted
to police that he had arranged the meeting
with the teen through the "casual
encounters" section of Craigslist. Paulish
told investigators that he had asked the
boy three times if he was over the age of
18, the affidavit said.
A telephone message left by CNN for
Paulish's attorney, Bernard J. Brown, was
not immediately returned Friday.
Paulish has been removed from his post at
the Prince of Peace parish and has been
suspended from acting in the capacity of a
priest, according to a statement released by
the Diocese of Scranton.
The diocese pledged its cooperation with
the investigation, and it called on anyone
who "may have been sexually abused by
Father Paulish or any member of the
clergy" to notify the district attorney's
office.
"I wish to acknowledge how unsettling this
is to me personally and to countless others,
that yet again a priest has been involved in
such inappropriate, immoral and illegal
behavior," the Bishop of Scranton, the Rev.
Joseph Bambera, said in the statement.