He is a former Vincentian priest who today finds himself accused of sexual assault. Three women filed a complaint against Father G., in 2011, 2018 and 2023. Since then, the man, aged around fifty, has been excluded from this Catholic community which has 130 priests.
This means that it is not attached to a diocese or congregation. However, this situation particularly worries the complainants, who fear seeing him practice without a religious or institutional framework and therefore reoffending. franceinfo met one of his victims.
“Very quickly, he became interested in me”
Léa is now 27 years old and works for the Church. When she meets the priest, she is barely an adult and is attending a scout camp. “At Vieilles Charrues, in 2017, we were volunteers,” she says.
“He seeks to have special time with me, often trying to talk to me when we are alone, etc.”
Léa, 27 years old
at franceinfo
While the priest regularly tries to be alone with her, Léa explains that she “avoids him a lot during this week”. She continues: "I don't want to be alone with him, because I don't feel good with him." Léa manages to avoid him once, then twice, until the evening of the attack.
All he has left of that night are fairly vague memories. “It took me six years to remember what had happened,” she says. “It was also my body that brought back the memories. I started to have a body that was failing, to have flashbacks, to be sick.”
“Everyone passes the buck”
Gradually, the idea of reporting the priest gained ground. So she decides: she is going to write to the congregation of Vincentians. “I was asked to meet the superior of the Vincentians,” recounts Léa.
“He admits to me that there are other victims who came forward a long time before me and that there have already been procedures initiated by these victims, but that he did not see the point in telling me.”
Léa, 27 years old
at franceinfo
After that, the priest is excluded from the Vincentians. He would then have to join a diocese according to Léa, which he does not do. “It is the laws of the Church which mean that a priest cannot be released into the wild, he must belong to a diocese or to his congregation. And there, he no longer belongs to anyone. I am told that he is still a priest, that he has no intention of leaving the priesthood and everyone is passing the buck,” she explains.
A “game of ping-pong”
When Léa says "everyone", she is talking about the congregation of Vincentians, but also the bishop of Aire and Dax as well as the prosecutor of Dax, in charge of the investigation opened in 2023. Because the last time the priest was seen, it was in the Landes. The women who accuse the priest are waiting for answers from these three actors. Léa says she is particularly exhausted because she calls a “game of ping-pong”.
“A predator is in the Landes,” she wrote to the diocese of Aire and Dax in 2023. The bishop replied that he discovered the affair upon reading this letter. However, according to the plaintiffs' lawyer, the priest had already received a warning from the church in 2019 for "his tactile behavior". So why, three years later, is he accompanying Landes teenagers to Spain?
Contacted by franceinfo, the bishopric maintains its position: no one knew until Léa's letter. The bishop also refuses to take the man of the Church under his authority. For his part, the Dax prosecutor says that an investigation is underway. The Vincentian lawyer is not able to answer us.
