“He is dejected but he accepts it. A priori, he will not appeal. Friday, the Assize Court of Vendée pronounced a sentence of twenty years of imprisonment against a fundamentalist priest. Pierre de Maillard, 56, was convicted of rape and sexual assault on 27 minors from 1995 to 2020, when the first complaints were filed. A security sentence was pronounced for two thirds of the period of imprisonment of the man of the Church. Priest of the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), not recognized by the Catholic Church, the man will also be subject to socio-judicial monitoring and an obligation of care. Before the jury retired to deliberate, the priest had pronounced these words: “I apologize, sorry, I apologize, sorry”.
The victims, sixteen boys and eleven girls, were mostly between twelve and fifteen years old at the time of the events. Some of the rapes and assaults were committed against several children from the same family and in the parents’ home. After the statement of his sentence, the lawyer of the priest Me Bertrand Maillard estimated that his client had “heard this verdict which is important”.
Pierre de Maillard was stationed at the Notre-Dame-du-Rosaire priory in Saint-Germain-de-Prinçay (Vendée) when the case broke out in October 2020, three months after the first two complaints were filed. Other victims then quickly made themselves known. The La Roche-sur-Yon prosecutor’s office mentioned 19 victims in 2020. Nearly a dozen others will be brought to light during the investigation. “The victims were locked up in a prison by this perverse manipulator, it was the psychiatric experts who described him as such”, estimated the lawyer for 24 of the 27 victims. According to Me Hugues de Lacoste Lareymondie, the priest denied the rapes before the court while acknowledging that “pedophilia infests all (his) being”.
“Tears of joy and relief”
“There are tears of joy and relief today and then we forged a bond in adversity, we all stuck together”, reacted a woman victim of the priest, who remained faithful to the fraternity. Founded in 1970 by Marcel Lefebvre (1905-1991), the Society of Saint Pius X rejects “Rome with a neomodernist and neo-Protestant tendency” born, according to it, of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and celebrates its masses in Latin.