FRANCE
Montreal Gazette
Associated Press
September 19, 2005
EVREUX, France -- A Canadian clergyman with a prior criminal record for sexually abusing minors confessed Monday to charges of raping a young member of his parish in Normandy, where he moved after serving a prison term in Quebec.
"I take responsibility for what has happened,'' Rev. Denis Vadeboncoeur, a priest in the Evreux diocese, told a court at the opening of his trial. "Now, I must accept and assume the consequence of my acts.''
Vadeboncoeur faces a 20-year sentence if convicted on charges of having abused his position of authority and raping a boy identified only as having been under 15. The assaults occurred from February 1990 to August 1993 while he was a priest at a church in the Normandy village of Lieurey.
The victim, now 30, came forward in 2000, first informing the bishop of Evreux, Jacques David, who alerted authorities.