ChristianShame.com

An Aurora man who is the last of four former officials of a Downers Grove church to be convicted of sex-related crimes was sentenced Friday to serve a year in the DuPage County jail work-release program.

Presiding DuPage County Circuit Court Judge Kathryn E. Creswell also placed John Puga on four years of sex offender probation, according to Paul Darrah, a spokesman for State’s Attorney Joe Birkett.

Creswell also ordered Puga to register as a sex offender and provide a sample of his DNA for a state criminal database, Darrah said.

Puga, 36, pleaded guilty to a felony charge of aggravated criminal sexual abuse, admitting he molested a 17-year-old girl.

The abuse occurred between November 2001 and May 2002 while Puga worked part time as the boys basketball team coach at Marquette Manor Baptist Church and Academy, 333 75th St., Downers Grove.

Authorities said some of the abuse occurred on the church campus. The specific crime to which Puga pleaded guilty occurred inside the academy following a basketball game.

While the age of consent in Illinois is 17 in most cases, it rises to 18 when the accused is in a position of supervision, trust or authority over the victim.

Former youth pastor Edward D. Greene, 38, of Asheboro, N.C., was sentenced March 27 to four years in prison. The onetime Woodridge resident pleaded guilty to a felony charge of criminal sexual assault while in a position of trust for molesting a 17-year-old girl in 1998.

The same girl was molested in 1998 and 1999 by then-deacon Frank W. Stima, 65, formerly of Naperville. Stima pleaded guilty to a felony charge of aggravated criminal sexual abuse and was sentenced in June 2006 to 60 days in DuPage County jail and two years of probation. His name is on the Illinois State Police Sex Offender Registry.

Stima and his wife moved to Washington and settled near Seattle, opening a shelter for homeless women in Monroe, Wash.

Greene’s and Stima’s victim, now 28, lives in South Carolina. She filed a civil lawsuit earlier this year against Greene and the church, seeking a minimum of $50,000 in damages.

A fourth ex-Marquette Manor official was sentenced last year to five years in prison in Alabama.

Howard L. Blattel, 68, formerly of Bolingbrook, served as a church deacon in the late 1990s and earlier this decade. He was convicted last year of first-degree sexual abuse for the August 2004 molestation of an 88-year-old woman in Gadsden, Ala.

Cited From:

http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/beaconnews/news/1229930,2_1_AU19_PUGA_S1.article

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