JERSEY (JERSEY)
Jersey Evening Post [St. Helier, Jersey]
September 7, 2024
By Stephen Blease
A CATHOLIC priest and self-proclaimed exorcist who worked as a youth leader in Jersey has denied ten charges of sexually abusing a child in the Island.
Piotr Antoni Glas (60), who now lives in Southampton, also denied a charge of perverting the course of justice when he appeared in the Royal Court yesterday.
Mr Glas, known as Peter when his Polish name is Anglicised, is alleged to have committed the crimes while he was working for the Catholic Deanery in the Island.
He is said to have placed the child’s feet against his face while he masturbated and placed the child’s feet on his face while holding the child’s head against his erect penis.
He was also accused of two counts of indecent assault on a child by kissing the child on the mouth.
Mr Glas appeared alongside David Richard Hick (69) of David Hick Antiques, who was also charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice by interfering with a prosecution witness in April this year.
Dressed in a grey hooded top and grey trousers, Mr Glas only spoke to enter not guilty pleas to the charges.
Mr Hick also denied attempting to pervert the court of justice.
For ten years of his ministry, Mr Glas was an exorcist as well as carrying out his regular work.
After his time in Jersey, he worked as a priest in the Catholic Diocese of Portsmouth. The Diocese has confirmed that he is no longer in public ministry.
Mr Glas and Mr Hick were released on bail.
Mr Glas will attend a trial for the sexual offences due to begin on 31 March, while both men will go on trial for attempting to pervert the course of justice on 19 May.
On Mr Glas’s Wiki page, he is described as a Polish fundamentalist Catholic priest: “He decided to get ordained at the age of 17, when he heard a voice telling him to follow God during a walk with a dog. He became a priest in 1989.”
While in the Island, he worked as a youth priest and became the priest for the newly formed “Catholic western parish” – a combination of the two former parishes of St Bernadette and St Mathieu.