Priest Domingo Espinal of the Inmaculada Concepcion parish, accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy, was detained at the Palacio de Justicia jail of Ciudad Nueva. Espinal was a protege of former President Hipolito Mejia, who employed him as the chaplain of the Presidential Palace church and promoted him to the rank of lieutenant colonel of the Armed Forces. Espinal’s case stagnated in the court system, a fact that was widely attributed to the support he received from former Attorney General Victor Cespedes and District Attorney Maximo Aristy Caraballo. With a new team of prosecutors now in charge, however, the case that was first brought to light by the boy’s parents, who repeatedly said they had refused offers to be bought out, was swiftly reactivated. Espinal was arrested on the orders of the Judge Alfredo Rios Fabian of the Fourth Instructional Court of the National District and will be taken to the Najayo jail in San Cristobal. The judge explained that despite the denials of guilt from the priest, a forensic report supported the charges against him. The parents originally took their accusations to the department for Children and Adolescents of the Attorney General’s Office, but the charges were disregarded. The parents pushed the case ahead regardless, taking it to the coordinating judge of civil courts, Doris Pujols Ortiz, who forwarded it to Rios Fabian’s court, where the investigation was reopened. Espinal was the director of the Escuela Victor Garrido in the INVI neighborhood located at 10-1/2 Km of the Prolongacion Independencia in Santo Domingo. The adolescent alleges that he was raped at gunpoint by the priest behind the school last year.