Abusive priest does not have to register

BALTIMORE, May 24 (UPI) -- A Catholic priest convicted of molesting a student in Maryland has been spared registration as a sex offender because the crime occurred before 1995.

Jerome Toohey Jr. was found guilty in 2006, almost 20 years after he sexually abused a student at Calvert Hall College High School. Under Maryland law, sex offenders convicted of crimes before September 1995 do not have to register unless they were in prison or on probation in October 2001, the Baltimore Sun reported.

Lisae Jordan, legal director of the Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault, said that two to three offenders a year are protected by the loophole. She said that when the state legislature made registration retroactive, legislators did not consider that some people who offended before 1995 might be convicted years later.

Toohey was a chaplain at Calvert Hall from 1982 to 1993. He has not functioned as a priest since 1993, when another former student accused him of abuse and filed a civil suit, which was later dismissed.

The church defrocked him this week.