From .......... Reuters World Report

March 17, 1994

Headline ..........

WOMAN WHO BLACKMAILED CATHOLIC PRIEST LOVER JAILED

LONDON - A Briton was jailed for three years on Thursday for extorting money from her lover, a Roman Catholic priest, by telling him he was the father of her child.

Retired nurse Olwyn Hirst, 66, had a 22-year affair with the cleric, identified only as Father X, after they first had sex in his church house in 1968. She was found guilty last month of four offences of blackmail over 10 years.

"It was both wicked and cruel, your victim was helpless. He was locked into a situation from which there was no escape but through public disgrace and scandal,"

the sentencing judge in the northern English city of Leeds told Hirst.

"You exploited the situation for all it was worth. Your greed, as is so often the case with blackmailers, was your undoing in that at the end Father (X) could give you no more and he was forced to surrender his reputation."

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