Charges: Convicted child molester posed as monk, sexually assaulted boy he met at Minnesota church

A man with a history of posing as a Catholic monk has been charged with sexually assaulting a teenage boy he targeted in a central Minnesota church.

Anthony Thomas Falco, 88, was charged in Stearns County District Court last week with three counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct in connection with the assaults about 15 years ago in St. Martin, Minn.

Falco was charged by summons, and law enforcement has requested a warrant for his arrest. Contact information for Falco was not immediately available.

According to the charges:

In late July, a man told a sheriff’s deputy about being sexually assaulted by Falco many years ago. He said his family would pick up Falco for Sunday mass and was told he was a monk in the Roman Catholic Church.

The man said that as a teenager, he had an interest in becoming a priest and would spend time with Falco at the church, sometimes while praying. He said Falco would hug and kiss him, and explained it was because he was Italian.

Soon, Falco brought the teen over to his apartment and sexually assaulted him. There were at least four instances in all, the man recalled to law enforcement.

Falco’s criminal history reveals he was registered as a predatory offender.

In the early 2000s, he was convicted in California’s Bay Area of molesting two teenage boys while posing as a monk. He admitted molesting one of the boys while they were on a religious pilgrimage to Bosnia.

He was released from prison in 2003 and relocated to St. Martin, according to the San Mateo County Times. There, he again said he was a monk, duping parishioners at a Catholic church in St. Cloud until he was hospitalized under his real name and the truth about his past surfaced.