UNITED STATES
Church Militant
By Juliana Freitag
The archdiocese of Brindisi-Ostuni reportedly has a network of homosexual, sexually abusive priests.
The first offense came to public light when the Italian investigative TV show “Le iene” received an anonymous email stating that underage boys in Brindisi had suffered sex abuse at the hands of Fr. Giampero Peschiulli, 73. The program then commissioned youthful-looking actors (one who claimed to be 16) to meet with the priest, and then secretly recorded their actions. Footage shows Fr. Peschiulli caressing the faces of the male actors and aggressively hugging and kissing them — all while wearing his Roman collar. The episode, titled “The Smooching Priest,” aired toward the end of 2014.
The airing led to police inquiries, resulting in several accusations from victims of sexual assault going as far back as 2002. The parents of some of the victims declared they had sought help from the archbishop of Brindisi-Ostuni at the time, Msgr. Rocco Talucci, who “seemed surprised at the fact that the youngsters were talking about the abuse, and invited the victims not to press charges and not share the incidents with anyone else.”
The accusations that eventually led to the priest’s prosecution in January of this year involved two of his altar boys, who revealed they had been suffering abuse since 2012, when both of them were under 14. The boys explained in detail how Peschiulli approached them when he was already in Mass vestments. He had a preference for boys, they claimed, always getting rid of any females in his presence, whom he referred to as “little whores only interested in sex.”
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