By Erica Molina Johnson and Stephanie Sanchez

El Paso Times

The Rev. Philip Taban stood and hugged his lawyer Thursday afternoon moments after a jury found him not guilty on charges of sexual assault.

Taban had been accused of sexual assault by an 18-year-old woman he met in 2007 while working at an East El Paso church as a visiting priest during the summer.

Prosecutors tried to prove that Taban, as a priest, exploited the woman's emotional dependency to get her to submit to sex.

Defense lawyers argued that the sex was consensual and that there was no emotional dependency when the intercourse occurred.

"I don't think he ever fully grasped the way we administer justice," said Taban's court-appointed lawyer Luis Aguilar. "He didn't know if he would get a fair trial in this country as a foreigner."

Taban, who is from Uganda, was found not guilty by a jury of nine women and three men after more than eight hours of deliberations over two days.

Read the entire article HERE [1].