(FRANCE)
The Tablet [Market Harborough, England]
November 11, 2021
By Rosabel Crean
A Lebanese priest has been convicted of rape and sexual abuse of minors and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Mansour Labaki was found guilty on two counts of rape and one count of sexual assault against three girls committed between 1990 and 1998 in France, where he lived for a number of years.
The Maronite Catholic priest was tried in absentia at the criminal court in Calvados, in the Normandy region of France, and convicted on Monday. His name will be added to the sex offenders list.
The prosecuting judge, Pascal Chaux, spoke of the lengthy investigation made harder by Labaki’s refusal to answer the investigating judge, as well as his use of intimidation campaigns against victims and their families.
“The investigation was long, very long. Mr Labaki did not respond at all to the investigating judge’s requests, claiming that he had health problems that we could not verify,” Chaux said during his pleading.
The case refers to a period during the 1990s when Labaki founded and ran an orphanage in Douvres-la-Délivrande in north western France, for Lebanese children who had lost parents in the civil war.
Labaki was widely known in Lebanon for his charity work, and was lauded as a spiritual icon, hymn writer and author. He wrote several books, including The Roads to Nowhere: A Child of Lebanon, that details the story of a child losing their family in war.
For years his reputation garnered him many defenders when the abuse stories surfaced, which also left those speaking out ripe for attacks. Some in Lebanon believe he has been wrongly protected by the Maronite Church, a powerful body in the country, which has allowed him to remain as a free man.
The 81-year-old is said to be at a convent in the town of Broummana near Beirut, where he has lived since 2013 having been handed a sentence of solitary penitence by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, following charges of sexual abuse of minors.
Despite claims against the priest first being filed ten years ago, Monday’s trial was the first time Labaki has been convicted in a criminal court. Previous accusations made by Labaki’s niece and three French women were directed straight to the ecclesiastical judiciary.
An arrest warrant for Labaki’s extradition was issued by French authorities in 2016, but the Lebanese state refused to comply.
Although the news of his conviction has been received with relief, some in Lebanon have expressed dismay at the lack of accountability in his home country. In addition, it adds to a growing list of impunity among the political and religious establishment in the Middle Eastern nation.
In 2016, Lebanese media reported that the head of Lebanon’s Maronite Catholic Church, Patriarch Bechara Boutros al Rai, had claimed that there was a misdemeanour against Labaki. However, he later retracted his statement, reaffirming his church’s commitment to the authority of the Vatican.