POLAND
GlobalPost
Agence France-Presse February 6, 2014
Poland’s powerful Roman Catholic church is being sued for damages for the first time by the victim of a paedophile priest, a human rights group said Thursday.
A demand for 47,500 euros ($63,500) was made by a 25-year-old male — identified only as Marcin K — who was molested as a child, Adam Bondar of the Helsinki Foundation that has taken up the unprecedented case, told reporters in Warsaw.
A Catholic priest was sentenced in 2012 to two years behind bars in the case, but his diocese refused to be held financially liable.
“It is the first civil lawsuit against the (Polish) Catholic church,” Bodnar said, adding that more than a dozen priests have been convicted of paedophilia in Poland.
“But there has never been a case in which a victim sues not just the perpetrator but also the church as an institution,” he added.
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