Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Priest Accused of 'Flossing' with Teen's Hair: Police

Starting point is 00:00:00 Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. That's Father Carlos Martins, a Catholic priest who's being accused of touching a teenage girl's hair and flossing with it. But his lawyer says he is innocent and claims the case is part of a shakedown. I take a closer look. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Father Carlos Martins is a Catholic priest

Starting point is 00:00:30 who hosts a podcast and until last November was traveling across the country with the relic of St. Jude. Now, Father Martins faces a misdemeanor battery charge for an alleged incident involving a 13-year-old girl, her hair, and a claim that Father Martins flossed with it at a stop in Juliet, Illinois last November. Father Martins has pleaded not guilty and his attorney says he's innocent. More on that very shortly. So how did this start?

Starting point is 00:00:57 Let's go back to the very beginning. The relic of St. Jude seen in this photo contains the arm of St. Jude, a martyr in the Catholic Church. Father Martins was traveling the country with the relic of St. Jude, seen in this photo, contains the arm of St. Jude, a martyr in the Catholic Church. Father Martins was traveling the country with the relic, which was on loan from the Vatican in Rome. Many, many times, this arm embraced the body of the Savior of the world. Hundreds, if not thousands, were gathering to see it at different stops across the country. Father Martins runs Treasures of the Church and puts on expositions with relics.

Starting point is 00:01:30 Last November 21st, Joliet police say they got a call from the Queen of Apostles Church. Police said they learned a priest had allegedly approached a 13-year-old female standing in line to view the relic of St. Jude and asked her about her hair. A Joliet police statement claims, it was determined at this point it is suspected the priest proceeded to grab the victim's hair and made a flossing motion with her hair in his mouth. It was reported to officers that after the victim had sat down, the priest sat behind her and made a growling noise. Queen of Apostles Catholic Church officials were concerned and said they contacted police. They issued a statement saying, during the course of the day's veneration in Queen of Apostles Church, an incident with the priest

Starting point is 00:02:17 and some students was reported to have happened in our church. We immediately contacted the police. A police investigation is still ongoing. The priest was confronted with the information. We informed the priest that he must depart from our parish and out of our diocese. In an abundance of caution, we decided that the remainder of the veneration of the relic and evening mass would be canceled. These decisions and actions were in accordance with our diocesan safe environment policies and our standards of behavior. So all of this sounded a bit odd and concerned staff at the church enough to contact police. Joliet Police said they launched an investigation. Since November,

Starting point is 00:02:58 Father Martins' attorney has said the incident with the student at the church was misconstrued. Attorney Marcella Burke wrote in a letter to news site The Pillar, as he always does, Father Martins began his interaction with the attendees in chit-chat dialogue. He is bald and apt to joke about it as a conversation starter. During his conversation with the older students, he made a comment to a student about her long hair, remarking, you and I have almost the same hairstyle. A comment met with giggles. He then remarked that he also once had long hair like hers, and he joked he would floss my teeth with it. Again, his comment was met with laughter. He then asked the student, have you ever flossed with your hair? Laughing, she shook her head no. He then said,

Starting point is 00:03:46 well, you have the perfect length for it, as he lifted up a lock from her shoulders to show her its length. On January 22nd, the Will County Prosecutor's Office filed a misdemeanor battery charge against Father Martins. The complaint states, defendant knowingly, without legal justification by any means, made physical contact of an insulting or provoking nature with minor in that said defendant placed the hair of the student in his mouth. Father Martins appeared in court on January 28th and pleaded not guilty. He was processed and fingerprinted as attorney, again saying he is innocent. The evidence will show that Father Carlos did not batter anyone. He did not put anyone's hair in his mouth, let alone floss with a student's hair or growl, among other completely false and repulsive accusations.

Starting point is 00:04:37 This remains a takedown of a good priest and an attempted shakedown of the church. Father Martins' lawyer also claims in her statement that a charge was only filed against Father Martins after the student's father called police a second time demanding further investigation. Father Martins lives in Detroit. On Facebook, he lists himself as a digital creator. He hosts a podcast entitled The Exorcist Files. Martins is an exorcist, and he launched the podcast to reach

Starting point is 00:05:06 young people over concerns that evil was on the rise after the number of exorcisms increased. In his travels, he has posed for photos with police officers and even actor Mel Gibson, a devout Catholic. And I want to make clear that we did invite Marcella Burke on to Crime Fix to offer her side of the story, but she declined our request for an interview. That's why we quoted those statements above. I want to bring in James Bogan. He is a criminal defense attorney in Ohio, but he is not affiliated at all with this case. So James, to me, this is kind of an odd one. This priest, Father Martins, is facing one count of misdemeanor battery. And it's for an accusation or an allegation that he was flossing with a girl's hair. He's saying

Starting point is 00:05:55 he didn't do it. So what are your thoughts when reading through all of the information about this case? Well, first of all, you have the statute. It's intentionally making physical contact with someone in an insulting or provoking way. That's the part of the statute he's charged with. And you have this girl who gives these details that are, you know, how do you make up something like that on one hand? And you have apparently there is another boy in line who is behind her who says he saw it all. But then on the flip side, you have his lawyer saying that he was just anything he did, he did it just to joke. And she swears that she can bring in 200 witnesses. Now, how much can this other boy corroborate what she says? And also there's this accusation going along with it that he sat behind her, this girl in the pew, making growling noises.

Starting point is 00:06:52 I think that's going to be even though that's not the main accusation. I think that's going to be one key of do we have other witnesses to corroborate that? Yeah. And his attorney, I mean, she's been very forceful, Marcella Burke. She's been very forceful in denying all of this, saying that, yes, he made a joke. There were all these people here. He made a joke that probably wasn't the best joke, but talked about how he was bald and that, you know, she had long hair. She's saying he didn't floss with her hair. He lifted up a lock of her hair. All of this different type of, you know, this different type of stuff. This happened back on November 21st. Now we get to January and it took like a couple of months for a misdemeanor charge to be filed. You know, the Joliet Police Department in their press release said that they did an

Starting point is 00:07:46 investigation. They turned it over to the Will County Prosecutor's Office, who then made the decision about the charge. Are you surprised that something like this took two months to look into and to, you know, then file a criminal charge? Not really. In my experience with cases like this, whether it's felonies or misdemeanors, a lot of times the investigators want to really dot their I's and cross their T's. And that's where I wonder, how many witnesses did they interview? How many witnesses do they have to corroborate the girl's story and the story from that other boy? And, again, do they have any witnesses corroborate that he was sitting behind her in the pew growling?

Starting point is 00:08:28 Because that's something that would be, I think, pretty obvious to anyone around. Because if you're a defense lawyer, you always want to go for any weak link you can. And aside from the fact that you can have witnesses who saw the whole interaction, if you have plenty of witnesses around who said, no, we were right there, we didn't hear any growling at all, that blows away any credibility for the accuser if that's the case. And of course, you know, we just have what we have. We have a press release from the police. We have the charging document that states the charge, the battery charge. And, you know, that's that's all we really have at this point, along with the account from Father Martin's attorney, where she talked about this was a joke that had been made and things of that nature. So, you know, he sounds like he's going to fight this.

Starting point is 00:09:24 I mean, he drove down to joliet from detroit to turn himself in he appeared in court uh he was processed and then you know released as most people are um in a misdemeanor case like this so what do you do as as an attorney i mean you're gonna you're gonna fight this mean, do you take this to trial? I mean, it sounds like, I mean, this is a misdemeanor charge and he's maintaining his innocence as every criminal defendant is entitled to do. I mean, this could turn into a big, big deal in Illinois, in Will County, Illinois, where they bring in witnesses for trial and have people testify as to what they observed.

Starting point is 00:10:10 Well, if your client wants to go to trial, then you got to tee it up. You got to get ready to go. And if the client wants to fight it, the only way to fight the case is at trial because any disagreements about the facts of the case have to be settled with trial, not with pretrial motions. One thing that I found to be very interesting about this is the fact that it made it this far. I mean, when the diocese first released a statement, or I guess I should say the church first released a statement saying, you know, this we had an incident that happened. You know, this was looked at as something with boundary issues or there was a violation of boundaries. And we called police.

Starting point is 00:10:52 They came in. They investigated. you know, amped up this whole thing once the father of the girl called back and demanded that there was more investigation that was needed, that type of thing. So, I mean, it just seems like to me, at least I could be wrong, but are you surprised that it, that it got this far to filing a criminal charge? I mean, father Martins is saying, look, I made a joke. I didn't do anything wrong. Obviously the police and this girl's family feel differently. Yeah, you know, that thought did cross my mind. Is this driven by the dad? Because it didn't happen right away, but the charge didn't happen right away. But then again, I don't know anything

Starting point is 00:11:42 about the investigation, about the witnesses that were interviewed and so on. So I don't really know how much of this was driven by the dad or not. James, when the church put out a statement early on when this first happened, they said that they were canceling this event out of an abundance of caution. They just wanted to make sure that there weren't any issues and they were wanting to provide a safe environment for the kids. You know, we weren't there. We didn't witness this, but obviously it raised enough concern on the church's part that they're claiming they contacted police to come in and take a look at this. Why do you think they did that? Well, because of all the backlash from years of child molestation issues with the church, when they would try to sweep it under the rug instead of going to the authorities.

Starting point is 00:12:34 So it doesn't surprise me one bit that they went to the police, because at this point, a lot of archdioceses around the country have adopted a mandatory reporting type policy. And they were just following that course. And at this point, an archdiocese doesn't have any choice but to report something like that and let the police investigate, let the professionals investigate and not try to investigate it themselves because they're not qualified to do any kind of investigation like that. I'm looking at the statement or one of the statements that was made by his attorney in a letter that was sent to another organization last November. And she talks about how he was making this joke and he does this to build rapport. And this is what he was doing when this incident happened. And he said, you and I have almost the same hairstyle. And he did that

Starting point is 00:13:29 because he's bald. And he makes this joke about, have you ever flossed with your hair? And then she shook her head no. And he said, well, you have the perfect length for it. And he lifted up a lock from her hair to show its length. I mean, he's claiming, look, I did not floss with her hair. I didn't do that. But is it just like the touching of the hair? I mean, could that be viewed as violating the statute, just lifting up the hair and holding it up? Well, you remember the statute, the level of culpability required is intentionally making physical contact in an insulting or provoking way. So he had to do it with the intent of doing it in an offensive way, insulting or provoking way. And that's something that the prosecution may have a hard time proving.

Starting point is 00:14:23 What do you think? what's your prediction? If you had a crystal ball, where do you think this case goes? Well, I think just based on what I just said here, I think the prosecutor is going to have a hard hurdle to overcome showing that he intentionally made this physical contact in an insulting or provoking way with that kind of specific intent. And then the other hurdle is witness corroboration. This is one that we're at is going to be big here.

Starting point is 00:14:56 And based on those two things here, I'm going to predict that he's going to be found not guilty. His attorneys had also kind of called this an attempted shakedown of the church, you know, kind of implying that there could be a civil aspect of this coming down the road as far as the church is concerned. Do you think there's enough there there for that to even be a possibility? That's definitely a fair question. And that's one of the things you got to be thinking about if you're his lawyer too. And I wouldn't be surprised if it was some attempt at a shakedown, but without knowing more, I really can't say, make anything, do anything else besides guess at this point. Well, we will keep an eye on it. James Bogan, thank you so much. Appreciate

Starting point is 00:15:45 your time as always. You're certainly welcome. Thank you. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Ann Janette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.

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Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Priest Accused of 'Flossing' with Teen's Hair: Police

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Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Priest Accused of 'Flossing' with Teen's Hair: Police

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