A former Roman Catholic Church deacon in New Orleans has been indicted on a charge that he raped an altar boy 40 years ago.
The New Orleans district attorney's office says in a news release that 84-year-old George Brignac was charged by a grand jury Thursday.
Brignac was removed from the Catholic Chuch after several sexual abuse allegations against him surfaced.
He was arrested in September.
Brignac was defrocked as a deacon in 1988 amid allegations of abuse. He had been acquitted of a separate abuse charge in 1978.
District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro says there is no Louisiana time limit for prosecuting race cases involving children younger than 12.
Brignac worked as co-director of the altar boy program at Our Lady of the Rosary Parish - which sits on the block where the complaint came from - in the 70s and 80s.
Despite facing charges of molesting boys at a Jefferson Parish church in the 1970s, he has never been convicted of a sex crime.
Similar charges in 1980 and 1988 had Brignac removed from the ministry. He was found not guilty of similar charges after a bench trial in Jefferson Parish in 1978, involving boys he allegedly victimized at St. Matthew the Apostle parish.
Until last year, Brignac had been allowed to read as a lector at a church in Metairie.
His name was on a 57-person list released in November that gave the names of priests and deacons with ties to New Orleans and credible child abuse accusations against them.