Jean-Marc Schoepff, priest and former youth chaplain in Nice, will be tried on January 8 for sexual assault on minors, more than six years after the first complaints. “It is time for him to explain himself”, which he intends to do because “he is combative”, declared Me Tina Colombani. The affair broke out in 2017, with a complaint filed by the father of forty-year-old twins, one of whom had forgotten the facts, apart from dreams of touching, and the other did not dare to take the step.
Charismatic within the youth chaplaincies where he officiated from the 1980s, Father Jean-Marc Schoepff, now aged 66, was appreciated in Nice. He formally contests the facts with which he is accused. Banned in September 2017 from any ministry with minors, he was suspended as priest at the opening of the judicial investigation in 2018, when he was briefly incarcerated. According to his lawyer, he returned to settle with his family in Nice.
Most of the facts denounced are prescribed
In total, nine people reported touching, mainly during outings or holiday camps. But the facts denounced mostly date back to the 1980s and there remain only two complainants for whom the limitation period has not been raised. One, born in 1985, filed a complaint in 2019 for facts dating from a trip to Rome in 1997. The other, born in 1982, places the facts in 1996 when he was a student at Stanislas, a private Catholic establishment. renowned in Nice.
Me Tina Colombani, however, expects that the seven plaintiffs for whom the facts are prescribed will be called as witnesses.