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  Priest Admits Sexually Abusing a Minor

Associated Press, carried in The Gazette [Montreal, Canada]
September 19, 2005

EVREUX, France -- A Canadian clergyman with a prior criminal record for sexually abusing minors confessed Monday to charges of raping a young member of his parish in Normandy, where he moved after serving a prison term in Quebec.

"I take responsibility for what has happened," Rev. Denis Vadeboncoeur, a priest in the Evreux diocese, told a court at the opening of his trial. "Now, I must accept and assume the consequence of my acts."

Vadeboncoeur faces a 20-year sentence if convicted on charges of having abused his position of authority and raping a boy identified only as having been under 15. The assaults occurred from February 1990 to August 1993 while he was a priest at a church in the Normandy village of Lieurey.

The victim, now 30, came forward in 2000, first informing the bishop of Evreux, Jacques David, who alerted authorities.

Vadeboncoeur, 65, moved to France in January 1988 to resume his life as a priest after having served a 20-month sentence in a Canadian prison. He had pleaded guilty to two charges of sexual abuse and one of sodomy against four teenage boys there.

Canadian religious authorities had contacted church officials in Evreux in 1987 to tell them of Vadeboncoeur's criminal record, Lieurey Mayor Elisabeth Simon said, adding that the information had been hidden from the community.

"The church knew, and that disgusts me," the mayor said, asking how it was possible that Vadeboncoeur was considered fit for the job.

Church officials in Evreux declined to comment before their expected testimony in the trial, which ends Wednesday.

 
 

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