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Victim sues priest 'for making him a paedophile'
The Local
A 64-year-old man in eastern France wants to see his former school chaplain convicted for "turning him into a paedophile", over 50 years after the cleric abused him.
The abuse began when the 64-year-old man was just a 12-year-old pupil.
His boarding school chaplain, who is now an 82-year-old retiree, would regularly subject him to sexual assault and the abuse carried for several years.
Decades later, the victim became a paedophile himself, and was convicted after fondling a 15-year-old girl in the street.
The man has since grown distant from his wife and two children, and moved back in with his mother in Ain, eastern France, as he tries to rebuild his life.
His therapist has since convinced him that the former priest is to blame for "turning him into a paedophile".
The 82-year-old former priest confessed to the crimes in early July, but the court ruled that the statute of limitations had passed, and that the guilty man was ordered to pay little more than one symbolic euro to his victim.
But that's not good enough, says the victim's lawyer, who is now taking legal action in an effort to help his client "be cured" of his paedophilic urges.
"My client is pursuing this priest to allow him a speedier recovery. He has been in therapy for many years and it's imperative that his attacker is condemned by justice," the lawyer, Emmanuel Ludot, told the RTL channel.
Ludot added that his client "lives with these paedophilic impulses like a disease".
He told the BFM TV channel that the former priest showed no remorse for his actions during the court case earlier this month.
"When I asked him how he could do such a thing in the position of a priest he just shrugged and said 'I like teens, I've always liked teens - why should I be deprived of them?'."
The lawyer isn't planning on stopping either. He accuses the church of sending the priest to Switzerland soon after the abuse was unearthed in an effort to "cover up" the damage.
He will also send a claim of €50,000 in damages to the Holy See, threatening to take the matter to the Paris High Court if he gets no response within a month.
While victims of child abuse don't usually become pedophiles themselves, a study in the UK found that one in ten men who were molested as children later abused minors.
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