Former New Orleans priest gets 25 years on sexual assault and rape charges

Boston, Mass., Jul 12, 2023 / 14:15 pm

A former Jesuit priest has pleaded guilty to sex crimes committed in and around New Orleans, in which he was charged with drugging and raping 17 adult male victims, many of whom were visiting the popular tourist area. 

Detectives also believe that there are more than 50 victims who remain unidentified.

Stephen Sauer, who reportedly left the Jesuit order by his own request in 2020, was sentenced to 25 years in prison on July 7 in front of a Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, judge. He will have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life and is barred from contacting 12 of the victims for life. 

The former priest pleaded guilty to 13 counts of sexual battery, nine counts of third-degree rape, 17 counts of video voyeurism, and 16 misdemeanor charges of possessing drugs without prescriptions and possession of drug paraphernalia, the Jefferson Parish District Attorney’s Office said in a statement July 7.

Sauer, 61, would meet his victims in the French Quarter neighborhood of New Orleans, specifically targeting intoxicated men or those who were lost and in need of help. He would drug the men, sometimes by placing narcotics in their drinks at bars.

After some of the victims passed out, Sauer would use an eyedropper to feed the men “sleep-inducing substances,” the district attorney’s statement said. 

He would then take the unconscious men to his home in Metairie and take photos and videos of them, “in various stages of undress,” with his phone, the statement said. 

Then, Sauer would molest some of the men and “pleasured himself,” the statement said. 

Sauer would drive the victims to their hotels or other locations the next morning. The investigation discovered that he shared and traded the images of his victims with others through email.

According to the statement, many of Sauer’s victims were not locals and were separated from friends or lost when Sauer offered to help them.

Sauer’s crimes were committed over two years between 2019 and 2021. 

The former priest’s LinkedIn profile says that he served as the pastor of Immaculate Conception Jesuit Church in New Orleans from 2008–2012. 

CNA inquired of the Archdiocese of New Orleans if Sauer had other positions in the area but was referred to his former Jesuit province. 

Therese Fink Meyerhoff, a spokeswoman for the Jesuits’ Central and Southern Province, confirmed that Sauer served in the province and said: “We learned through media reports that Mr. Sauer pled guilty to charges involving adult men. We encourage any person who has been harmed to notify law enforcement.”

Sauer’s LinkedIn account also says he worked as an assistant professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, a Jesuit school, from 2006 to 2008.

Records on the university’s website show that Sauer, who taught theology there, earned his bachelor’s degree at Georgetown University in 1983; his master’s degree at the University of Minnesota in 1991; his bachelor’s of sacred theology degree at Pontificia Università Gregoriana, Rome, in 1997; his licentiate in sacred theology at the Institut Catholique de Paris in 1999; and his doctorate of sacred theology from The Catholic University of America in 2007. 

According to Sauer’s LinkedIn account, he was a faculty member at the Jesuit University of San Francisco from 2013 to 2016; however, his name did not appear in search results on the school’s website.

WDSU6 reported in 2021 that Sauer served as executive director of Arc of Greater New Orleans, a nonprofit organization that serves children with intellectual disabilities, but after his December arrest that year, Sauer was no longer employed by the organization.

Authorities began investigating Sauer in June 2021 after he sent a computer hard drive to be repaired by a company in New York. 

An employee at the company discovered hundreds of images on the hard drive showing that sexual assaults had appeared to have taken place.

Authorities in New York referred the case to the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office after determining the origin of the photos.

Many of the victims were able to be identified by the detectives because Sauer photographed their driver’s licenses and other forms of identification.

When detectives searched Sauer’s home, prescription pill bottles that had the name of a sex offender in Missouri were found. 

Zolpidem, which is known as a “date rape” drug, was found as well, the district attorney’s office said. 

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