TESTIMONIAL EUROPE 1
She hopes the judges "will not question her word". In 2016, Marie (the first name was changed), a practicing Catholic mother, had filed a complaint against a former priest of her parish, which she accused of rape. After being indicted in mid-May for "rape on a major person", "moral harassment", "sexual assault on minor", and "sexual solicitation of a minor under the age of 15", the priest asked on Thursday the withdrawal his indictment before the Chamber of Education. For its part, the alleged victim, now aged 45, wants to believe in justice. "There is only justice that can make things happen" on these cases of sexual abuse in the Church, she confides to the microphone of Europe 1.
It is then that she is going through a period of "distress", especially related to several pregnancies ended by deaths in utero, that Marie accepts the help proposed by the parish priest of Versailles, that she crosses every Sunday to Mass and who is his confessor. "It was appointments once a month," says the mother of seven children. "I needed to tell about my distress and other difficulties as a couple or with my many children".
"I became like an object"
But when the clergyman changes parishes, their relationship evolves. "Insidiously, I was invited a first time for a coffee, after the week-long mass to go to lunch with him," says Marie again, before explaining the relationship of trust that binds her then to the priest. "It was someone to whom I had given all my confidence, he knew the intimacy of my intimacy". Little by little, the priest continues his attempts of rapprochement, according to Marie. "He invited me to always more proximity, especially in the mails, explaining that he was 'a refuge of tenderness for my distress'".
"When it rocked physically, with just a hug at first, I was locked in my shame," says the complainant, "little by little, I became like an object, until sexual violence (... ) and the introduction of an object ". And Marie to describe "a whole series of acts under duress" that would have followed.
Heard on europe1:
"I had no support"
"I realized in parallel that he had an ill-fitting relationship with one of my daughters," says the parishioner. A behavior which is worth to the priest the two indictments for sexual attack and sexual solicitation, but also harassment on minor of 15 years. "" It can touch one of my children (...) that was the trigger in my torpor, "she describes," it was then that the priest "felt that I had escaped him and tightened his grip, with a whole ploy of threats, lies and blackmail".
In April 2015, a friend of Mary warns the hierarchy of the priest. Then Mary herself, first in September 2016, going to confession with the vicar general "so that he knows". If the priest was summoned, the reaction of the hierarchy "was not at all the height of what I thought," regrets Marie today, who had "completely trust in the bishop". According to Mary, the priest "turned the story around by saying that I was embalming, that I was trying to hurt him, to destroy his reputation". "I had no support, the victim's cell was refused to me, for my daughter too," she continues indignantly.
The priest challenges the charges against him
In December 2016, after a 2:30 hearing with the vicar general, during which the lay employee of the diocese incites her to lodge a complaint, Marie decides to go with her daughter to confide in the police. The complaint is filed on December 16, 2012. Only after the priest is suspended. "Today I am accusing him of rape, I had a hard time realizing all that, I took time to understand this influence", analyzes the mother, for whom this affair has changed her report to the Church. "I was deeply hurt in the trust I had in the Church," she says. And to conclude, fatalistic: "If the Church is not forced to move, it does not move."
For his part, the priest "fiercely contests" the facts with which he is accused and only recognizes a relationship with this mother. He seeks the cancellation of his indictment. "Today, there is only justice that can make things happen," hopes for her Marie, who wants this story, "as sordid as it is, serve other victims, to release the speech, especially in my diocese where it is really ossified ".