Ex-priest James Rapp will spend the next 20-40 years in prison for molesting students at Lumen Christi high school in Jackson between 1980-86.
"His crime and his position was a murder on our soul," said Andrew Russell, who Rapp abused while he was a student. "It affected everything that my grandma, my mother, my family tried to build. Years of foundation in the church, he shattered."
Russell and five other students detailed how Rapp would take them into his office after school and molest or even rape them.
J.C. Wood explained Rapp put him in the same room with him on an overnight class trip.
"He knelt beside the bed I was in, he had a bed, he held my hand, said the Lord's prayer, and then climbed in bed with me and had his way with me," Wood said.
The students said Rapp was such an integral part of Lumen Christi, known as the really friendly one, influencing students from day one.
"He had a sick method of explaining how to get dressed in the morning," Russell said. "And I'll never forget how long it's taken me to change the way that I dress myself in the morning so I don't have to think about this scumbag."
Rapp plead no contest to 19 charges of first and second degree criminal sexual conduct while teaching at Lumen Christi, and his victims say, his imprisonment is their new beginning.
"Today is a good day," Russell said. "Today is closure."
