A pastor in the French city of Orleans has been condemned to a 12-month suspended prison sentence for failing to report sexual crimes committed by a member of his church in the past.

“The court has sanctioned the fact that when one is aware of something abnormal, he has to say so”, the prosecution lawyer told local newspaper France Bleu Orléans.

Fail to report on time

The offender was a maths teacher who was very involved in the congregation of the Orléans Evangelical Baptist Church, where he arrived in 2018.

He then confided in the pastor about the sexual crimes he had committed in the Christian community ha attended before.

In march 2022, the evangelical leader denounced him to the courts, leading to a conviction of the abuser of sixteen years of criminal imprisonment for the rape and sexual assault of three young men, two of them minors.

But the public prosecutor accused the pastor of not saying anything in the meantime, and requested a suspended sentence of three years in prison and a fine of 1,500 euros.

When he appeared in court last September, the pastor claimed that he “thought it was sexual misconduct” and was afraid of accusing the wrong person, so that he decided to submit the case to the council of elders of his church.

“We didn't think about it [...] I was told about things with young people, I didn't dig into it, maybe that was my mistake”, he said.

No secrecy of confession for evangelical pastors

There is no secrecy of confession for evangelical pastors as there is for Roman Catholic priests or Anglican ministers.

However, after all the sexual abuse cases of the Catholic church denounced in recent years, in 2019 Pope Francis ended the secrecy rule in sexual abuse cases.

There is a big debate about this issue within the Church of England.

Evangelicals in France have been especially active in providing tools help protect victims of abuse and prevent sexual crimes in church contexts.