FRANCE
RFI
A priest in the French Basque country was accused of sexually assaulting a teenager on Wednesday and a former monk was to appear in court on Friday in ongoing revelations of paedophilia in the French Catholic church. Lyon Archbishop Philippe Barbarin is currently under investigation for allegations that he covered up cases of sexual assault on minors in his diocese.
The mother of the alleged victim filed a case for sexual assault on her son in the 1990s against a priest in Bayonne on Wednesday and he has been relieved of his functions.
In a letter published on the diocese’s website Bayonne Archbishop Marc Aillet said he had notified the legal authorities of the case on 15 April and promised to cooperate with the investigation.
The priest has already tried to commit suicide twice – once after being investigated for allegedly molesting his nephew on a camp in Poland, the other time during a scandal over the molesting of a teenage girl in 2007.
He went into therapy after that attempt and on arriving in the diocese Archbishop Aillet met him and assigned him to tasks that did not involve contact with children, according to his letter.
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