A 31-year-old priest from Charente was indicted for sexual assault on a minor under the age of 15, Agence France-Presse (AFP) learned from the Versailles public prosecutor’s office and the diocese of Angoulême, which suspended from all functions on Tuesday October 24. The indictment, pronounced on Friday, was accompanied by judicial review.
The facts occurred between 1er July 2021 and August 5, 2023, “to the detriment of a single victim, a boy aged between 9 and 11 years old at the time of the events, one of the children of a family to whom the accused was close”, declared the prosecution to AFP. Some of these events took place in Yvelines, where the victim’s family resides. Investigations continue in search of other potential victims.
Entering the seminary in 2015 in Bordeaux, the future priest then joined the Paris seminary before becoming an educator in a boys’ school integrating musical training in Liesse-Notre-Dame, in Aisne, then continuing his course in Guinea in 2022, according to the daily Free Charente. In 2023, he was ordained priest in Angoulême and appointed vicar in Ruffec, in the north of Charente.
“I immediately took canonical precautionary measures while awaiting the end of both civil and canonical proceedings, in [lui] withdrawing all priestly ministry”declared in a press release Mgr Hervé Gosselin, bishop of Angoulême, expressing his “dismay” and his “sadness”.
“I first want to think of the young person who testified and the ordeal he faced. I want to tell him my prayer, my support and my compassion. I also think of his family and understand their anger”added the prelate, ensuring “the full cooperation of the diocese with the judicial institution”.
In June, in another case of sexual assault accused of a now deceased priest, Mgr Gosselin had denied having been informed of it during the lifetime of the ecclesiastic, whom he had succeeded at the head of a community in Brittany.