FRANCE
La Croix
Gauthier Vaillant with Bénévent Tosseri at Saint-Étienne
France
The need of victims for recognition has continued to cause historic cases of sexual abuse by priests to re-surface in the French Church.
This has occurred once again over the last few days in the dioceses of Saint Etienne in the Loire region and Nancy in Meurthe-et-Moselle.
In the Loire region, the priest involved is Fr Régis Peyrard, 84, a chaplain in an aged care home, who has admitted to events going back thirty years.
At the time he was the parish priest in La Talaudière, a commune near Saint Etienne.On Tuesday, the newspaper 20 Minutes published the testimonies of three of Fr Peyrard’s victims, who are now in their forties, leading Bishop Sylvain Bataille to make a statement at a press conference that evening.
The three victims had already made themselves known to the diocese in 2000, 2014 and last March. Each time, the matter was referred to prosecutors but in each case, it was barred by the expiry of the time limit for prosecution.
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