The trial is due to open on Monday before the Vendée Assize Court in La Roche-sur-Yon and should be held behind closed doors at the request of the civil parties. Priest of the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X, not recognized by the Church, Father Pierre Maillard will be tried until June 2 for rape and sexual assault on around thirty minors. The victims, sixteen boys and eleven girls, were mostly “between twelve and fifteen years old at the time of the events”, according to Maître Hugues de Lacoste Lareymondie, lawyer for twenty-four of them.
The case broke out in October 2020, three months after the first two complaints were filed, then other victims quickly made themselves known. “27 victims over 25 years”, from 1995 to May 2020, underlines the lawyer. The priest of this traditionalist community based in Saint-Germain-de Prinçay had been indicted in October 2020, in particular for “rape by a person in authority, rape of minors under the age of fifteen and sexual assault on minors under the age of fifteen and of more than fifteen years by person having authority and corruption of minors” and remanded in custody.
Certain rapes committed in the parents’ home
“The victims were silent as often in this kind of case” and “suddenly someone decides to speak”, relates Me de Lacoste Lareymondie. “It’s the shock when the affair bursts but each victim suffered the shock for twenty-five years”, he estimates. Some of the rapes and assaults were committed against several children from the same family and in the parents’ home. “It’s common among Catholics, priests who come to lunch on Sunday with parents,” adds the lawyer.
The Priestly Society of Saint Pius X is a civil party in this case. “Mr. de Maillard fooled his superiors,” said SSPX lawyer Solange Doumic, believing that the priest “succeeded in presenting such a different face from his actions.”