One priest of my acquaintance had hilarious stories of the passes made at him by women – I am not sure if his witty brush-offs really happened, or were just what he wishes he’d thought of at the time and he’d in fact just looked mildly horrified and legged it. Less amusingly, I know one  priest who was convicted of sexual assualt on the grounds of the testimony of one woman with wobbly mental health, known to lie and to have a strong motive to lie in this matter, in a trial held in secret where no defence witnesses were called, though the defence lawyer had letter and phonecalls and visits from people with strong evidence to entirely discredit the accusation. I know another priest suspended by his bishop from ministry on the  strength of one accusation. The accuser refused to go to court, and the bishop refused the priest the canonical trial he asked for to clear his name: the chap could do nothing, except “sit in his hut and fish”, as a priest friend put it.

The sad thing is that the news reports say “Priest accused of x”, the reader carries away  “priest did x”, and “priest entirely exonerated, accuser lied” never entirely takes away the impression Madame Evangelista described.  Of course, news reports deal like this with everyone, and the lives of teachers and others are also ruined by false accusations of abuse. But for some reason, people don’t think “teacher=perv”. Or indeed, “LGBT Youth Worker = Paedophile“.

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