This priest, born in 1970, was indicted for aggravated rape, provocation of a minor to use narcotics, endangering others and illicit use of narcotics, for acts committed on the night of 3 to 4 November 2022, the Paris prosecutor’s office said on Thursday, confirming information from RTL.
He is suspected of having administered a substance to the teenager without his knowledge in order to alter his judgment and the control of his actions.
In a press release posted on Twitter, the Archbishop of Rennes, Mgr Pierre d’Ornellas, indicated that it was Father Yannick Poligné, pastor of the parish of Saint-Louis-Marie in Brocéliande, where he is based. since 2016. He was ordained a priest in 1999, the parish website says.
According to a source familiar with the matter, the priest and the 15-year-old minor met on the Grindr dating app and met in the capital.
They went up to a hotel room in which the priest made the young boy ingest synthetic drugs, which made him sick.
After having sex, the teenager alerted friends who managed to geolocate him using his cell phone, allowing firefighters to rescue him, according to RTL.
The priest, who admitted having offered drugs, then admitted to violent but consented intercourse, said he did not know that the young man was a minor, the latter having declared on the dating application that he was an adult , according to another source close to the investigation.
According to several sources familiar with the matter, who confirmed information from the Parisian, the priest is HIV positive and is on triple therapy, but would not have told the teenager and would not have protected himself during intercourse.
In his press release, Bishop d’Ornellas indicated that he had «assured civil justice with the full collaboration of the diocese» and had «reported the facts to Rome to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in order to launch a canonical procedure in parallel». .
This case comes at a time when the Church is again shaken by a scandal of sexual violence after the confessions of Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard who recently revealed that when he was parish priest in Marseilles 35 years ago, he had a behavior «reprehensible with a 14-year-old girl», which was made public on Monday at the Conference of Bishops (CEF) in Lourdes.
The Marseille prosecutor’s office ordered a preliminary investigation for aggravated sexual assault.
In mid-October, the press had revealed that Mgr Michel Santier, former bishop of Créteil who retired in 2021, had been sanctioned that same year by the Vatican authorities for «spiritual abuse having led to voyeurism on two adult men». .
The president of the CEF Eric de Moulins-Beaufort announced Monday that 11 bishops or former bishops had been «implicated» before the civil justice or the justice of the Church for reports.
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