A former priest in the St. Louis area and known sexual predator with multiple offenses in three states admitted Wednesday to abusing a boy in the 1990s while he was a chaplain at DePaul Health Center.
Frederick Lenczycki, 74, pleaded guilty in St. Louis County Circuit Court to two charges of sodomy.
He was charged in February with repeatedly grabbing a boy’s genitals and trying to force a second boy to expose himself between January 1991 and December 1994. The abuse, according to charging documents, happened in the same block as the DePaul Health Center, where Lenczycki was a chaplain.
Lenczycki is scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 16. One of the two boys he was accused of abusing in the case, Randy Kanaday, now 38, said the guilty plea was vindication.
“I am so relieved that justice finally didn’t give up on me,” Kanady said. “For all those years, people looked the other way, it felt like. And now, finally, something’s being done.”
Lenczycki, who now lives in suburban Chicago under court supervision, has admitted to abusing up to 30 boys in Illinois, Missouri and California over 25 years, according to church and court files.
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