Fugitive, child-abusing Louisiana pastor arrested in Georgia
A Louisiana pastor who admitted to sexually abusing a teenager was arrested Thursday in Georgia.
Patrick Wattigny, 53, admitted Oct. 1 to abusing a minor from 2013 to 2015, NOLA.com reported. While Louisiana authorities investigated the case, Wattigny decided to chill at his house in rural West Point, Ga., along the state’s border with Alabama.
Cops there arrested him Thursday on a warrant from Louisiana’s St. Tammany Parish on four counts of molestation of a juvenile, the parish sheriff’s office announced in a press release. All four counts pertain to the same victim.
St. Tammany police said Wattigny began grooming his victim at age 15, eventually molesting the boy at least four separate times, including multiple times in his church rectory.
Wattigny was pastor at St. Luke the Evangelist Catholic Church in Slidell, La., across Lake Pontchartrain from downtown New Orleans, from 2013 until his removal in late September 2020, according to NOLA.com. He was previously pastor at a parish and chaplain at a high school in New Orleans from 2000 to 2013.
Though Wattigny was arrested on a fugitive warrant in Georgia, an oddly written state law means he was not necessarily running from the law, New Orleans CBS affiliate WWL reported. It’s possible he just happened to cross two states and hang out in a 3,700-person town while under criminal investigation.
Wattigny is being held in a west Georgia jail over the weekend, according to WWL. Authorities say he’ll be extradited to Louisiana early next week.
———
©2020 New York Daily News
Visit New York Daily News at www.nydailynews.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
