"AOD Priest Lawrence Ventline Gets Jail Time"

"County Prosecutor Timothy J. Rutkowski said during the court proceeding that police acquired as evidence at least seven minutes of video from the business's security system which shows Fr. Ventline walking with his pants lowered.

He told the judge the pants appeared to have been 'obviously modified' to make the indecent exposure easy to accomplish.

Rutkowski also said testimony by two bakery employees indicated the priest was well aware of his indecent behavior during the incident, and thus requested that Fr. Ventline be sentenced to 180 days in jail and one year of probation. The maximum jail term for the misdemeanor is one year.

Rutkowski told Church Militant the judge ruled that evidence showed Fr. Ventline's indecent behavior 'was not accidental.'

Despite yesterday's sentence of jail time and probation, only time will tell whether Fr. Ventline will somehow reappear once again as a spokesman for the Catholic Church with prominence in local media, as he did following revelations about his life as a male prostitute published almost 19 years ago.

In December 2001, Fr. Ventline's business as a gay masseur was revealed in an exposé published in The Wanderer newspaper. Even though the investigative report showed Fr. Ventline was making money as a male prostitute in his $210,000 condo in Sterling Heights — with advertisements running regularly in at least three gay publications in metro-Detroit — Cdl. Adam Maida and his bishops stood silent on the story and Aux. Bp. Kevin Britt wrote a letter claiming Ventline declared himself as adhering to his vow of chastity."