Appeal court upholds verdict against paedophile priest

The News
December 3, 2014

http://www.thenews.pl/1/9/Artykul/189299,Appeal-court-upholds-verdict-against-paedophile-priest

The defendant (C) at the Lodz appeal court.

Parishioners gather at the Lodz appeal court in support of the priest.

An appeal court has upheld a 2013 verdict against a priest accused of molesting five boys, but has cut his prison sentence from eight and a half to seven years.

The verdict at the appeal court in Lodz, central Poland, has bitterly disappointed many local parishioners, who cannot believe that the clergyman is guilty.

''There is no justice in Poland,'' a group of supporters claimed after the sentence was passed.

Although the trial was conducted behind closed doors, a wide variety of evidence, including recordings made of phone conversations, and the verifications of psychologists who had spoken with the victims, was examined.

Father Slawomir S. (name withheld under Polish privacy laws) had apparently made the boys financially dependent on him, paying them to do odd jobs such as raking leaves at the rectory. He also paid for some of their phone bills.

The five victims had served as altar-boys for the defendant in the village of Szczuki, near Lodz. They were all under the age of 15 at the time of the incidents, which occurred between 2002 and 2009.

One victim told the TVN24 news station last year that he finally stepped forward as he “would have been furious if the priest abused someone else.”