Ex-Priest Arraigned in Oxnard Sex Abuse Case

A former Santa Paula priest pleaded not guilty Monday to charges of molesting two teenage boys at their Oxnard homes in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Carlos Rene Rodriguez, 48, served as a priest at Santa Paula’s Our Lady of Guadalupe Church from 1988 to 1993. At the time, he also was a regional consultant for the archdiocese’s Office of Family Life in Santa Barbara.

Rodriguez, who was arrested in Los Angeles on Dec. 10, faces five counts of child molestation. The date for a preliminary hearing is to be set in Ventura County Superior Court on Feb. 4, said James Farley, Rodriguez’s attorney.

Rodriguez was arrested last year on suspicion of sexually abusing an altar boy in the mid-1980s at St. Vincent de Paul Church in downtown Los Angeles, where he worked before taking his post in Santa Paula.

Those charges were dropped days after a U.S. Supreme Court decision on statutes of limitation in California sex-abuse cases. The ruling struck down part of a state law allowing prosecutors to file charges in decades-old cases.

Prosecutors have said the Supreme Court’s decision will not block the current case against Rodriguez.

The effect of the ruling was to throw out cases in which the statute of limitations would have expired before 1994, they said. Because of the timing of the alleged crimes in the current case, the statute of limitations on filing charges would have expired after 1994, when the law took effect.