A Findlay man now about to graduate high school testified Tuesday that the northwest Ohio priest accused of molesting at least two minors asked him when he was in the eighth grade if a female saint depicted by a statue was in a suggestive pose.
But that was as far as the conversation went, the man told the U.S. District Court jury hearing the trial of the former Rev. Michael Zacharias, because he made an excuse about running late for a ride home and left the priest's office where he had gone to do an interview for a class assignment about that saint.
"There was tension in the air.... It was out of place," the man, whose name as with others in the case is being withheld from publication because he is the alleged victim of illegal sexual conduct, told the court.
The man's testimony opened the fifth day of prosecution witnesses in the case against Father Zacharias, 56.
Father Zacharias was arrested on Aug. 18, 2020 after federal agents searching another alleged victim's phone following that victim's arrest in an unrelated drug case found text messages between him and the priest that indicated sexual activity and the exchange of money.
Father Zacharias is charged with one count of sex trafficking of a minor, two counts of sex trafficking of a minor by force, fraud, or coercion, and seven counts of sex trafficking of an adult by force, fraud, or coercion.
Brian Russ, an FBI special agent from Lima, Ohio, said investigators learned from the first known of the alleged victims that one of that man's two younger brothers had also been involved. A sister of a third alleged victim, meanwhile, came forward as the result of media reports of the priest's arrest, the agent said, noting that those reports included publication of an FBI hotline for that purpose.
Testimony from Mr. Russ and Paul Pape, a supervisory special agent at the Lima office, accounted for the balance of the day's witnesses after that of the Findlay high-school student, who attended St. Michael the Archangel School through the eighth grade.
In that grade, students had a final project to research a saint, and the witness said he was assigned to St. Teresa of Avila. The assignment had an interview component, and the witness said he was referred to Father Zacharias, who had become St. Michael’s pastor in 2017, as being an expert on that saint.
The witness said he met with the priest in his office during the final class period of a school day, and they discussed St. Teresa for “about three to five minutes” before Father Zacharias opened a computer tab that showed a picture of a St. Teresa statue in which her head is leaned back in a joyful look.
The total interview meeting lasted no more than 10 minutes, he said, and at no time did Father Zacharias touch him inappropriately.
He said he did not immediately tell anyone, but when a discussion about “awkward conversations” came up at an ensuing family dinner, he brought up what had happened with Father Zacharias and “there was kind of a fork-drop moment.” He said his mother then contacted his eighth-grade classroom teacher about it.
During their testimony, the two FBI agents narrated their interrogations of Mr. Zacharias, who after arrest following a morning Mass at the Findlay church spoke first with Mr. Russ in his vehicle and then with him and Mr. Pape at the FBI’s Toledo office.
Under cross-examination by defense lawyer Mark Geudtner, Mr. Russ stated that while the first-known victim expressed some confusion about whether initial incidences of Father Zacharias performing oral sex on him occurred at church rectories in Mansfield or Van Wert, that victim was emphatic that they occurred while he was still a minor.
And upon being shown photos of those two rectories without being told which was which, the FBI agent testified, that victim said the initial sexual contacts occurred in Mansfield.
The location mattered because Father Zacharias was not transferred from St. Peter's Parish in Mansfield to St. Mary's in Van Wert until after that victim turned 18. In his FBI interrogations, Father Zacharias acknowledged to investigators that he had sexual relations with three young men, but denied any such contact occurred before they legally reached adulthood.
He also told the FBI a statement he recorded in a “confession video” about having groomed the first-known victim from the day he first met him as a sixth grader at St. Catherine of Siena School in West Toledo was “fantasy” rather than truthful.
“It’s not like I planned on I’m going to groom [that victim] for the rest of his life or this or that. That came much later,” Father Zacharias said in an FBI recording.
Both the “confession video” and an “action video” depicting Father Zacharias performing oral sex on that man were both recorded in 2015, long after he had passed into adulthood. Father Zacharias told the investigators in the recordings that he continued to pay that first-known victim for the opportunity to perform oral sex on him well into adulthood because he was “safe” and “convenient.”
Mr. Russ conceded on the stand that the FBI had no direct financial evidence tying Father Zacharias to any of the alleged victims earlier than a check he drafted in 2009 to the first-known victim for $1,500. Investigators did, however, find a credit union account into which the priest transferred nearly $8,000 in 2004 after a period of keeping minimal balances there, then made a series of cash withdrawals during the period that the first-known victim said Father Zacharias paid him in cash.
Cell phone records from before about 2011 also were unavailable, the FBI said, because the telecommunications companies did not retain them.
John Thebes, a defense lawyer for Father Zacharias, said during the morning that no decision had been made about putting the priest on the witness stand in his own defense once the prosecution rested.
First Published May 9, 2023, 10:53 p.m.
