Sentenced to three years in prison, suspended, in November 2021, by the Bourges Criminal Court, for violence against several students, Father Régis Spinoza was arrested on May 31, giving catechism lessons to children. , in a barn, at La Guiraudière, in the town of Saint-Amand-sur-Sèvre, in Deux-Sèvres, confirms his Parisian lawyer, Me Alexandre Varaut, from the Paris Bar.
Abbé Régis Spinoza, former director of the private school l’Angélus, sentenced to three years in prison, suspended
The former director and teacher of the private Catholic institution Angélus, outside of a contract with National Education, which he had opened in 2010 in Presly, in the north of Cher, was under a ban on engage in any professional or voluntary activity involving minors for ten years.
The priest was indicted on June 30, 2017 and placed under judicial supervision. A multitude of testimonies from children, but also from teachers and volunteers, had been collected by the investigators, revealing a daily reality, according to the instruction, of bullying, humiliation, corporal punishment and chores for some children. .
This religious ordained a priest on September 22, 2007 in the Saint-Éloi church in Bordeaux for the Institute of the Good Shepherd, a traditionalist society which depends on the Vatican, according to Me Alexandre Varaut, misinterpreted his ban.
Angelus case: the criminal court must try, for three days, Father Régis Spinoza and two supervisors
Indeed, underlines the Parisian lawyer, “he was never alone with the children since there were always parents during the catechism lessons. It is for this reason that he did not see the problem to give lessons to children because there were parents.”
The priest was brought on June 2 before the Niort prosecutor’s office (Deux-Sèvres) for an appearance on prior admission of guilt (plead guilty). He was sentenced to six months in prison, to which are added six months corresponding to the partial revocation of the suspended sentence to which he had been sentenced in 2021, indicates Julien Wattebled, public prosecutor of Niort. “He admitted the offense but explained that he was always with another adult when he gave his catechism lessons to the children”, explains Julien Wattebled.
Released free from the Niortais courthouse, Father Régis Spinoza will soon appear before a sentence enforcement judge who will place him in detention or offer him an alternative to prosecution.
Contacted, his other lawyer, Me Ludivine Lamoure, from the Bourges bar, only wished to indicate “that a procedure has been opened and that it is over”.
Remy Beurion and Marion Lapeyre