(LifeSiteNews) — A priest of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) was found guilty of multiple counts of sexual aggression and rape of minors last Friday evening and sentenced to the maximum penalty of 20 years’ imprisonment, with a mandatory minimum term of 12 years.
When he has served his term, he will be barred indefinitely from visiting the regions where his crimes took place – the department of the Vendée and neighboring Charente-Maritime – and be subject for the following 10 years to social and legal supervision as well as mandatory treatment. It is expected that the convicted priest, 56-year-old Father Pierre de Maillard, will not appeal the decision handed down by the Court of Assizes of La Roche-sur-Yon, in the Vendée, his legal counsel told the press.
“This maximum sentence does not take away your share of humanity,” the president of the court told de Maillard on Friday.
27 victims, sixteen boys and eleven girls mostly aged between 12 and 15 at the time of the offenses which took place between 1995 and 2020, came from families who usually attended the SSPX chapel for Mass. Many were present at the trial that lasted one week and was held behind closed doors, owing to the involvement of minors. De Maillard was charged with 33 counts of “sexual aggression” and 4 counts of rape, which could make him “one of France’s biggest serial pedophiles,” said Lionel Bethune de Moro, one of the victims’ lawyers.
Under French law, a criminal or delinquent cannot be given a heavier sentence than the legal maximum for his most serious offense. In this case, the number and gravity of the charges, which were all found to be true by the three professional magistrates and a jury of nine who sat in on the trial, led to inflicting the maximum penalty, following the recommendations of Emmanuelle Lepissier, the advocate general who represents society in the name of the state.
Before the jury withdrew to deliberate, the priest was quoted by the lawyers as having said: “I’m sorry, forgive me, I’m sorry, forgive me.” His counsel commented that de Maillard had “heard the severe verdict.” “He’s despondent but has accepted the decision and is unlikely to appeal,” he said.
During the trial, the priest acknowledged the aggressions, confessing that “pedophilia infested his whole being,” and accepted that his sentence would be a “penance” that he had acknowledged “in advance,” according to the victims’ lawyers. But he denied having raped any of the children, some of whom he abused in their own homes.
Solange Doumic, counsel for the SSPX who filed a civil complaint against de Maillard, told the press that the priest had “admitted his crimes but at the same time downplayed them: this is false contrition.” His former direct superior at the priory of Notre-Dame du Rosaire of Saint-Germain-de-Prinçay near Chantonnay in the Vendée, Father Laurent Ramé, stated: “He has manipulated us so badly that we don’t know how much credence to give to his confession, he doesn’t recognize all the facts.”
It was Ramé who, in 2020, was confronted with a complaint on the part of a family with seven children, six of whom said they had been molested by de Maillard. That same day he reported the accusations to the police and to his superiors. The priest was taken to a retreat house in the south of France, and as the enquiry moved forward, he was remanded in custody and then placed in pre-trial detention until his trial.
At the time, 19 victims in total came forward, followed by eight others during the judicial enquiry that lasted over two years. According to one source, three others have made themselves known recently, which could lead to a second trial.
When Ramé discovered the situation in 2020, he was dumbfounded, telling us at the time that de Maillard, who was his assistant at the priory, had skillfully concealed his acts. He told the media that it would not be enough for the priest to “regret” his acts but that he would need to “repair” them by the punishment of a prison sentence. He said that the victims needed know that they had been “heard and understood,” and that the SSPX would do all that was possible to “repair” and to support the victims, and to help them “reconstruct” themselves. “Wounds will certainly remain,” he sadly remarked.
The question on everyone’s lips is this: was the SSPX aware of the great evil that was being committed in its midst by the wayward priest? At the trial, Ramé said: “No, this is not part of our world, this is unthinkable, it’s inconceivable!” His prompt and efficient response to parents’ complaints has certainly played its part in the fact that most of the families involved did not move away from the SSPX. He noted that “most of them remained faithful to the Church and to the Fraternity, well knowing that it is not religion that must be accused of this, but the priest who used religion in order to gratify his cravings, his disordered passions.” “Some have distanced themselves; their confidence has been damaged and broken,’ he added.
“Justice has been done, I would have preferred that these things would never have happened, but given what has taken place, I am very satisfied with this verdict,” said Ramé.
According to Hugues de Lacoste-Lareymondie, a lawyer close to the SSPX who represented 24 of the 27 victims, the first known acts were committed two years after de Maillard was ordained. These were relatively minor, and appear to have involved ambiguous gestures towards seminarians, although one victim said that when he was ten years old in 2003, the priest had “fondled” him. The boy’s mother warned the then superior of the Fraternity in France, who is said to have simply moved de Maillard to the Vendée, but she did not go to the police.
A further accusation involving an adult young man in a seminary led to an internal inquiry in 2010 and the priest was “sanctioned” within the SSPX. By 2013, he was no longer allowed to be given functions related to children. Those who were victims of Maillard’s advances after that were attacked in their homes.
Questioned by the press about this, Ramé said: “He was accused of certain acts, but they were minor compared to what we discovered in 2020, so the sanctions were taken in proportion to what we knew.” Solange Doumci added that the SSPX was “suspicious of him and monitored him.” “He had promised not to commit these acts again, and everyone believed him,” she said.
Since that time, as far as can be ascertained, there were no other complaints to the authorities of the Fraternity until 2020. Said Hugues de Lacoste-Lareymondie: “The victims were locked up in a kind of prison by this manipulative pervert, that’s what the psychiatric experts called him.”
A 48-year-old woman juror died of a heart attack on the second day of the trial. Two victims fainted in the courtroom when the accused denied having raped some of the children.
A canonical procedure is underway to reduce de Maillard to the lay state, according to Doumic.
During the SSPX’s pilgrimage from Chartres to Paris over Pentecost weekend, the Fraternity’s superior in France, Father Benoît de Jorna asked the pilgrims to pray specially for the victims of de Maillard’s “pedophile acts.”
He also asked for prayers for the Church and for de Maillard himself. There is indeed no crime so abominable that once confessed and regretted, it cannot be pardoned by Our Lord.
Saint Theresa of Lisieux once said:
It is not because I have been preserved from mortal sin that I lift up my heart to God in trust and love. I feel that even had I on my conscience every crime one could commit, I should lose nothing of my confidence: my heart broken with sorrow, I would throw myself into the arms of my saviour. I know that He loves the Prodigal Son, I have heard His words to St. Mary Magdalen, to the woman taken in adultery, and to the woman of Samaria. No one could frighten me, for I know what to believe concerning His mercy and His love. And I know that all that multitude of sins would disappear in an instant, even as a drop of water cast into a flaming furnace.
These are the two truths we must hold on to, as Jesus Christ taught His apostles: “He that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck;” but also that it is “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” that cannot be forgiven.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains: “There are no limits to the mercy of God, but anyone who deliberately refuses to accept his mercy by repenting, rejects the forgiveness of his sins and the salvation offered by the Holy Spirit. Such hardness of heart can lead to final impenitence and eternal loss.”
For this reason do we pray to God “especially for those most in need of Thy mercy.”