A 19-year-old teen, identified in the French media as Alexandre V. has been charged with jamming a crucifix down the throat of and murdering a pedophile Church priest after he had heaped sexual abuse on him. It is being reported that the accused and his father, both were sexually abused by Father Roger Matassoli before Alexandre jammed a crucifix down the priest’s throat and murdered him.
“We now know that [the suspect’s] father was a victim of the priest. “We also know that this papa tried to protect his children and then, after the divorce, he fell back into the clutches of Matassoli. Alexandre mentioned facts that were likely to disturb him deeply. There was talk of Alexandre cleaning the house naked for the priest”, the suspect’s lawyer reportedly told Franceinfo.
Reportedly, Alexandre has been arrested and remanded in custody on charges of aggravated murder, acts of torture and for resisting arrest. According to Franceinfo, the teen has said that he has no recollection of committing the murder.
The 90-year-old Christian priest was found tortured and murdered in his home on the 7th of November 2019. When the priest was found, there were signs of torture to the body like blows to the head, abdomen and face. In 2009, the Priest was removed from his duty after accusations of sexual allegations had surfaced, however, Matassoli stayed on the bishop’s payroll until 2018.
The priest was the subject of a church investigation shortly before his death. The inquiry was dropped after he died, with no report ever being sent to Rome, according to Franceinfo. The outlet also noted that three people had contacted the local bishop’s office with information regarding abuse by the priest since July 2018.
According to a local paper, thelocal.fr, the public prosecutor’s office reported two complaints in 2018 “concerning sexual assaults committed on two young boys when, aged 10 to 14, they were altar boys in Father Matassoli’s parish”. The case had not moved forward because under French law the complaints were time-barred, since they were committed in 1962 for one of the victims, and between 1976 and 1980 for the other.
After the murder of the priest, a local woman spoke up against the horror that the Christian priest had unleashed on her brothers.
“Some people say that he was transferred [in 1967] to Saint-André because he touched children in his other parish in Clermont”. She recounting that both of her brothers were abused by the priest. She discovered the abuse when her younger brother, Paul, told her he had showered with the priest.
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When she approached her older brother, Jacques, about the incident, he “dissolved into tears,” describing eight years of abuse that included the priest molesting her brother as he sat at the family’s dinner table, among other horrors, reported FranceInfo.
The epidemic of sexual abuse of young boys by Christian priests is all too familiar. In November, two Catholic priests were sentenced to 40 years in prison in Argentine for abusing deaf children in a Church-run school.
Apart from the global trend, the country has also been rocked by repeated rapes and other abusive incidents at Churches, as recently Franco Mulakkal, a Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Jalandhar, was arrested and released on bail later for allegedly raping a 44-year old nun at a guest house in Kuravilangad in May 2014. Similarly, Father Johnson V Mathew, a priest of Malankara Orthodox church was accused in the rape and sexual abuse of a married woman belonging to the fold was arrested in July 2018.
In February, the Mysuru police had arrested three pastors (religious leaders associated with protestant Churches) for allegedly raping a teenager in Mangaluru. All the three Christian priests have now been charged under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, as per reports.
Read: Pope Francis and Catholic Church shamed after Chile gets tough against child sexual abuse scandal
In another incident, a 60-year-old pastor named Chandra Kumar belonging to a local church in Nagaland was arrested for allegedly raping a 10-year-old girl in Assam’s Karbi Anglong district.
In another incident, a 33-year old Catholic priest, Father Prakash Damor was arrested in Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh for abetting a 17-year-old girl’s suicide.
Recently, a special Mahila Court in Cuddalore had sentenced a church priest to 30 years in prison and nine others to life in prison for their involvement in the horrifying 2014 Tittakudi rape case, which involved two minor girls.
