Ex-priest ordered imprisoned for possessing child porn

ST. LOUIS (AP) -- A former Roman Catholic priest and grade school counselor was sentenced Friday to nearly five years in federal prison and fined $10,000 for possessing thousands of pornographic images of children.

U.S. District Judge Jean Hamilton sentenced James Beine, 60, who also goes by the name Mar James, to four years and nine months behind bars.

"Collectors of child pornography prey on innocent children. We will continue to be aggressive in our prosecution of these predators," U.S. Attorney Ray Gruender said. "This is not a victimless crime."

A federal jury convicted Beine, of Highland, Ill., in March after deliberating just 90 minutes during.

During the two-day trial, jurors saw some of pornography said to be on nine computer disks that investigators recovered from the Arnold home of Michael Laschober, a Beine friend.

Laschober said he didn't open a brown envelope Beine delivered to him in March 2002, believing the disks inside contained financial information Beine kept as backup records.

In another case, Beine is charged in St. Louis Circuit Court with exposing himself to three boys in a restroom at a St. Louis school when he worked as a counselor. That case is pending.

Beine was dismissed from the priesthood in 1977 over sexual-abuse allegations. In the mid-1990s, the St. Louis Archdiocese settled for $110,000 two lawsuits alleging Beine sexually abused boys more than 30 years ago.

For more than a decade, he was a counselor at elementary schools in St. Louis. He resigned shortly before the state charges were issued in March 2002.

Beine also is charged federally in East St. Louis, Ill., where prosecutors say he had child pornography at his home in Highland.