88-Year-Old-Priest gets 15 years for child sex abuse

| Mon, 11/27/2006 - 05:29

An 88-year-old Sicilian priest was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Friday for sexually abusing a young boy.

Father Alessandro Restuccia, parish priest on the Sicilian island of Lipari, was sentenced together with the mother of the victim, who received five years for allowing

Restuccia to molest her son.

Prosecutors said the sexual abuse began in 1996, when the victim was five years old, and that it continued for two years.

During that period, the mother, a French national who is also the priest's housekeeper, was going through a divorce with the boy's father.

It was the father, an island fisherman, who reported the case to police.

Restuccia was suspended from his job when prosecutors began investigating the allegations.