A Roman Catholic priest who was arrested last week on charges that he raped a woman in a Brooklyn rectory in 2000 was dismissed by a Texas diocese in 2001 because of complaints that he had groped women there, a law enforcement official in New York said yesterday.
The priest, the Rev. Cyriacus Udegbulem, 38, was accused of touching women against their will and was dismissed by the Diocese of Laredo, Tex., said the official. The Laredo diocese refused to discuss Father Udegbulem's dismissal yesterday.
Father Udegbulem, a visiting priest from Nigeria, pleaded not guilty on Monday at his arraignment before Justice Neil J. Firetog of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn. Judge Firetog set bail at $50,000, which Father Udegbulem could not post. He remains imprisoned at Rikers Island pending his next court date, in September.
The priest's lawyer, George Lewis, said that his client maintained that the sexual contact in Brooklyn was consensual.
According to Brooklyn prosecutors, Father Udegbulem raped a parishioner in her 30's in the rectory of Our Lady of Charity Church in Bedford-Stuyvesant on New Years Day in 2000.
After the woman complained to officials in the Brooklyn Diocese, they dismissed Father Udegbulem and reported the allegations to his supervising bishop in Nigeria.
Diocesan officials said Father Udegbulem told them he would return to Nigeria. But two months later, he was working as a hospital chaplain in Laredo. He was arrested last Friday.