The prosecutor of the Republic of Lyon demanded, Friday, January 17, "a prison sentence not less than eight years" against the former priest Bernard Preynat, accused of "sexual assaults on minors under 15 years per person having authority ".
The court will render its decision on March 16 in this case described by the prosecutor, Dominique Sauves as "out of the ordinary". Bernard Preynat faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a fine of 150,000 euros.
He "shattered" the lives of scouts aged 7 to 15
"It is not the trial of a collective cowardice or of an institution but that of a man, who had set up his own structure to respond to his impulses, because he needed to have a varied pool and always fed small victims, "pointed out the magistrate.
She accuses the accused of having "broken" the lives of Scouts aged 7 to 15 at the time of the facts, and of having "used the silence of the parents and the silence of the Church" to multiply his abuses between 1971 and 1991.
Assuring that the former parish priest, defrocked in mid-2019 at the end of his canonical trial, "is aware of the harm he has done", his lawyer Frédéric Doyez called on the court to take a decision which postpones him "in the community of men, in a place that is the one we occupy when we are 74 and sick. "
This trial was eagerly awaited since the start of the case at the end of 2015, when complaints were finally filed, splashing the Catholic hierarchy through Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, condemned last year for his silences on the case.
"Mechanical" forgiveness
"I apologize to the victims, their families, other priests, the diocese and the whole Church that I have soiled by my actions," said the defendant at the end of the magistrate's closing address, during which Bernard Preynat remained impassive. The latter then reaffirmed that "since 1991", he has been "faithful to the promise made to Archbishop Decourtray", the archbishop of the time, by no longer touching any child.
A pardon described as "mechanical" by the prosecutor, who was all the less convinced of the civil parties that the accused, if he recognizes most of the abuses he is accused of, denied some and downplayed others.
This serial abuser whose number of potential victims makes him dizzy - up to "four or five children" per week during summer camps, he admitted - had a lot of control over his entourage which the adulated.
"Liar"
The defendant also pointed to the responsibility of the Church. "I was told: 'you are a patient' (...) They should have helped me ... They let me become a priest", accuses Bernard Preynat.
This elder siblings of seven, raised in religion by an authoritarian father, commits his first assaults around 16 years, after having suffered it himself in his childhood, according to him. Which would have led him to reproduce them, for an expert psychiatrist.
Confidences which did not convince the civil parties: "Preynat, it is a liar", accused Friday Me Yves Sauvayre.
"You don't have to believe me" but "I didn't lie. I was sincere in the reservations I expressed" on certain accusations, replied the defendant, aware of the "limits of his memory ".
With AFP and Reuters
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