ST. LOUIS (AP) — A St. Louis judge ruled Thursday that a 2014 arrest in a statutory sodomy case that was later dropped should be expunged from the record of a Roman Catholic priest.
Circuit Judge Jason Sengheiser found that the Rev. Xiu Hui “Joseph” Jiang, 39, met his legal burden to have the April 2014 arrest record expunged.
Jiang was arrested after a boy said the priest molested him in the restroom at St. Louis the King elementary school, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
After all charges were dropped in 2015, Jiang sued the boy’s mother and the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priest. The lawsuit was settled in 2017 and the mother and SNAP apologized to Jiang.
Jiang’s lawyer, Neil Bruntrager, said Jiang’s settlement with SNAP was confidential but the city of St. Louis had paid the priest a $17,500 settlement.
Jiang said that he had never met or spent any time with his now 21-year-old accuser, who did not appear in court Thursday.
Jiang is still seeking to expunge a statutory rape arrest record in Lincoln County, where a judge later dismissed a child endangerment charge against him. A jury sided with Jiang in 2017 in a lawsuit filed in that case.
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