A defrocked American priest was sentenced Tuesday, December 21, to 12 years in prison for multiple sexual abuse of children in an orphanage in East Timor, after a trial that tore the deeply Catholic country apart.
Read alsoInvestigations for suspected rape and sexual assault at L’Atelier de Sèvres art school
At least 15 women have accused Richard Daschbach, 84, of subjecting them to forced touching and sex as children at a Catholic institution in this former Portuguese colony in Southeast Asia. Judges in the Oecusse District Court have found the Pittsburgh-born American guilty of several counts of sexually abusing minors at the orphanage.
The ex-Catholic priest was sentenced to a total of 37 years in prison, but judges took his advanced age into account to reduce the sentence. “Richard Daschbach sentenced to 12 years for sex crimes against minors and taking into account the age of the defendant», Indicated Yudi Pamukas, the president of the court. The court also ordered the Timorese authorities to pay financial compensation to the victims.
Richard Daschbach was in court for the verdict – open to the public after a closed-door trial that saw multiple suspensions. The judges demanded the immediate incarceration of the convict, placed under house arrest during his trial, to prevent him from escaping.
“A bitter story for the whole country”
The priest had founded in the 1990s the orphanage and the refuge of Topu Honis in Oecusse, a Timorese enclave in Indonesia. There he provided shelter, food, clothing and education to hundreds of orphans and poor children. Several victims accused the cleric of having kept lists with the names of the children who were to spend the night with him. They accused him of multiple rapes and touching. But part of the Timorese questioned the accusations and many victims refused to be identified, fearing reprisals.
One of the victims, who had testified on condition of anonymity during the trial, said she was satisfied with the judgment. “It is the fruit of our struggle“, She told AFP at the end of a procedure during which the victims complained of having had great difficulty in being heard. The victims’ lawyers have indicated, however, that they will appeal this sentence, too lenient in their eyes, to try to obtain a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison. “The page of history written today is a bitter story for the whole country», Underlined Maria Agnes Bere of JU, S Juridico Social, organization representing the victims.
“Our children have been the victims of horrific crimes for so long because as a society we were blinded by the belief that a personality like that of the accused could not commit such crimes against children.“. The lawyer for the defrocked priest, Miguel Acacio Faria, said he would also appeal.
Read alsoGabon: investigation into alleged sexual assault on hundreds of children by a football coach
Richard Daschbach, who arrived in Timor as a missionary, was defrocked by the Vatican in 2018 but the accusations of sexual abuse were not published until the following year by local media. Catholic authorities in Dili, the capital of East Timor, said this year that the priest was rejected by the Church for confessing “hate crime»Child abuse.
The affair has deeply divided the former Portuguese colony where the priest has long been a figure revered for his charitable work but also for his support for the struggle for the independence of the country during the brutal period of the Indonesian occupation from 1975 to 1999. He continued to receive support at the highest level during the trial. The country’s first president and independence hero Xanana Gusmao came to the audience to support the defrocked priest. Richard Daschbach was indicted in August by the US court on seven counts of illicit sexual conduct abroad.