A former priest was sentenced on Tuesday to eight years in prison by a criminal court in Nord Department, France, for aggravated rape and sexual assault on a minor, a judicial source said on Wednesday.
The plaintiff, born in 1990, filed a complaint in February 2018 for events that took place from 2004 to 2008, when she was between 14 and 18 years old.
The priest, Vincent Sterckeman, born in 1973, had been officiating since 2011 in Gravelines, Grand-Fort-Philippe and Saint-Georges-sur-l’Aa, near Dunkirk. At the time of the offences, he was stationed in Steenvoorde and then in Nieppe, according to the source, who confirmed a report by France 3.
Sterckeman was suspended from all public ministry since his indictment in February 2018. The diocese of Lille said in a statement that “the measure is maintained.” It added that the judgment had been communicated to Rome, “which will determine the canonical sanction.”
“My first thoughts go to the victim and her family. I express my sincere sympathy to them. I assure all the parishioners concerned, who are shaken by these sad events, of my solicitude,” Laurent Le Boulc’h, archbishop of Lille, was quoted as saying in the statement.
“I reiterate my determination to work so that the Church becomes an ever safer home for all those whom the Lord entrusts to it,” he added.
