Two months after admitting in court that he molested seven underage boys from 2002 to 2018 in France, Spain and Switzerland, a former U.S. district superior for the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) was sentenced to one year in a French jail.
According to reports, Father Arnaud Rostand, 58, did not challenge the charges made against him, but admitted his actions and made an apology in court, saying "I apologize to the victims and deeply regret everything I have done. I'm here to be punished."
Rostand had been arrested in December last year, having been based in the Monastery of Our Lady of Montgardin in the Western Alps since 2021. The idyllic monastery has been styled the "golden cage" due to being used as a place of seclusion for priests to dedicate themselves to a contemplative life. Gap Criminal Court sentenced him to 12 months in prison with deferred incarceration and to undergo four years of "socio-juridical" monitoring and psychiatric treatment, as well as provide compensation for his victims. In the event of non-compliance, he gets an additional three years imprisonment.
The prosecutors were seeking a sentence of four years of monitored living, "with a care injunction, a permanent ban on exercising a voluntary or professional activity with minors." The reason why they are seeking "socio-judicial" living is due to the priest having been under psychiatric care since 2019. His defense lawyers argued that this should be taken into account since Rostand is "a weak, fragile, condemnable man."
In court, Rostand said that he informed the SSPX via letter in 1998 that he had an "attraction" to children. He stated that he informed the SSPX about this again in 2000, then in 2006 and 2013, with reports claiming that he claimed to have "always fought against this attraction."
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On April 5, the SSPX published an initial statement, though it did not name Rostand. The statement, which was reissued on April 15 for the U.S. and Canada, claimed that "at no time and in no way were the actions of this priest covered up by his superiors." It also noted that "in 2014, after ambiguous and inappropriate attitudes were brought to their attention, the society's superiors withdrew the incriminated priest from the apostolate, entrusting him with administrative tasks without any responsibility and under appropriate disciplinary supervision, firstly in Switzerland and then in Canada from 2019."
Other unverified reports alleged that Rostand was not entirely restricted in his ministry while in Canada. Rather, he performed baptisms and held public masses on occasion. (Related: BOMBSHELL: Kamala Harris covered up sex abuse crimes of priests, buried records, and took cash from church officials.)
Former priest in Paris sentenced 10+ years for raping, sexually assaulting boys from 1990s to 2000s
Rostand's sentencing came on the heels of the May 25 sentencing of a former French senior priest, Olivier de Scitivaux de Greische, who was found "guilty of all the acts of rape and aggravated sexual assault" he was accused of.
The former senior priest in the diocese of Orleans southwest of Paris, who will be serving a minimum of 10 years behind bars, acknowledged everything "without reservation." He was also sentenced to socio-judicial supervision, the obligation to seek treatment and a ban on carrying out any professional or voluntary activity involving contact with minors.
"I admit because I have to use words, to the touching, the caresses, the fellatio, the digital and penile penetrations, to all the acts," he told the court.
In court, it was the first time when the accused admitted to raping and sexually assaulting two other victims as early as 1982, but he cannot be prosecuted for those acts since they were past the statute of limitations. The defense lawyer Damien Brossier has appealed to the court for leniency, stressing that his client was no longer a danger.
When he was just ordained as a priest, he became close to the parents of his victims, regularly inviting himself to their home and staying overnight in the bedroom of the eldest child, who was raped and assaulted from the age of nine. Sexual acts took place at the boys' home while their parents slept and also at his place, in a winter chalet or on summer camp. The three brothers and a friend described before the court the abuse they each suffered, unaware at the time that the others were also victims.
The youngest brother described several months when the priest would call by "every week, every day, every evening" and "the moment when he used tools on my body" or when "he shaved me." "When one wasn't available, there was the second or third," de Scitivaux de Greische said about the three brothers, who are now in their 40s.
Despite youth workers and families first alerting the diocese to the abuse in the 1980s and further warnings by families and youth workers within the chaplaincy in 1998, the sexual assaults continued until the early 2000s.
Read more stories of abuse to children at Evil.news.
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