Former village priest convicted of rape

A priest was sentenced Friday to 18 years in prison for rape and sexual assault committed on several children, notably when he was a priest in the village of Massiac (Cantal).

Philippe Pouzet, 70, was also sentenced to a treatment order, five-year socio-judicial monitoring, a ban on traveling to Cantal and a ban on any activity with minors for life.

At the end of his trial before the Cantal Assize Court, Attorney General Paolo Giambiasi demanded 15 years in prison “for society, and to (…) do justice” to the victims’ family.

The priest was on trial for the sexual assault of four children from the same family and the rape of one of them around 2017. He was also on trial for the sexual assault of a teenager in 1994, now aged 44.

This large family of seven children, isolated in the city, was the target of the one who, priest of Massiac from 2011 to 2017, organized evenings at the presbytery, offered gifts, lent his car or paid for a telephone plan.

During the hearing, Philippe Pouzet admitted dozens of sexual assaults and the rape of a 14-year-old teenager, while ensuring that the children were on the initiative or “looking for themselves”.

“He does not recognize the victims’ status,” said Jean-François Canis, lawyer for the families.

“I am overwhelmed by all the pain that has come to the surface. I am the only one responsible for it,” the accused finally declared before the court withdrew.

In his pleading, his lawyer Frédéric Franck asked the jurors not to take into account his client’s difficulty in explaining his actions.

“The facts are instinctive, that’s why he doesn’t know how to go further to explain them. […] Don’t blame him for that. He did it, he committed it, he doesn’t know how to explain,” he argued in pleading against the 15 years required. “It’s a reinstatement of the death penalty, take a rope and go hang him in the Square, it will go faster,” he said.

In total, ten victims were interviewed and a fifth child in the family claimed to have been raped himself.

The investigation showed that the Church, aware of the priest’s faults, had not interrupted his career: it had noted in particular “problems of affectivity”, “moments of abandonment” which had led to “incidents”.

In 1984 in Sommières (Gard), then a boarding school teacher, he was tried for “indecent assault”, after having sexually assaulted two children.

“We reread history knowing what happened,” justified Mgr Bruno Grua, former bishop of Saint-Flour, adding: “Of course, from time to time, I tell myself that I ‘Should have been more vigilant.’

A director of investigation who came to testify estimated that around ten priests were aware: “I don’t know why he was not removed from his priesthood.”