Polish bishop becomes first to face trial for paedophilia cover-up

In a landmark case for the deeply Catholic country, a Polish bishop will go to trial on Wednesday for allegedly covering up acts of paedophilia committed by priests in his diocese. This is the first case in which a high-ranking church hierarchy has faced criminal charges for failing to inform authorities of church abuse by clergy. “This is a spectacular case, and, in Polish realities, essentially unprecedented,” Artur Nowak, a lawyer, publicist, and writer who appeared in a watershed documentary about sexual abuse in the Catholic church in Poland, told AFP.

According to prosecutors, Tarnow bishop Andrzej Jez was aware of two cases of priests abusing underage altar boys. One of the priests in the southern Polish city, Stanislaw P. — whose last name has been withheld due to Polish privacy laws — is believed to have abused 95 children, and committed sexual crimes against 77.

It was one of the largest cases of sexual abuse reported in the Catholic church in Poland — with incidents going as far back as the 1980s, in every parish where P. had served. Neither clergyman was charged — the former’s victims were not able to precisely determine when the abuse took place, while the second priest, Fr.

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Tomasz K., claimed poor health, and the case was dropped. In previous cases of alleged church coverups, prosecutors had declined to open investigations into church officials — arguing that the criminal code did not contain provisions requiring law enforcement to be notified in cases of abuse. But a 2017 amendment to the code made it obligatory to notify law enforcement immediately in cases of sexual offences committed against children under 15.

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