At 84, Jean-Michel di Falco has no intention of letting the matter rest. The Bishop Emeritus of Gap and Embrun has announced that he is appealing to the Court of Cassation after a decision by the Paris Court of Appeal that ordered him, in civil court, to compensate a man accusing him of rape and sexual assault committed in the 1970s.
In this case, the criminal justice system failed to act. The alleged events, dating from 1972 to 1975, are beyond the statute of limitations, which shifted the proceedings to the realm of civil liability. The plaintiff, Pierre-Jean Pagès, claims to have been sexually abused when Jean-Michel di Falco was a priest and head of the Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin school in Paris, a context that lends these accusations a particular significance, given the interplay between spiritual authority and close educational ties.
The Paris Court of Appeal, however, ruled in favor of the plaintiff, despite previous rulings that had largely rejected his case. In a decision reviewed by AFP, the judges determined that the evidence presented established "wrongful conduct" of a sexual nature, resulting in bodily harm entitling the plaintiff to compensation. Consequently, the compensation was set at nearly €200,000.
When civilians catch up with passing time
This shift also reveals something about our legal system today. When criminal cases run up against the statute of limitations, civil law becomes the narrow, but still viable, path to seeking recognition and redress. For the reader, it's a sometimes bewildering mechanism: a case without a criminal trial, without a criminal conviction, but with a ruling that identifies the wrongdoing and quantifies the damages.
Jean-Michel di Falco, for his part, proclaims his "complete innocence" and vehemently contests the judges' reasoning. His lawyer, Olivier Baratelli, reports that his client is "extremely shocked" by a decision rendered "54 years later," denouncing "the absence of any clues or material evidence." The Court of Cassation, if it is called upon to review the case, will not retry the facts; it will only determine whether the law was correctly applied.
What remains is a case suspended in the slow pace of legal proceedings, with, on one side, a man who says he has carried a private history for too long, and on the other, a Church figure who refuses to accept the public disgrace. The appeal prolongs the confrontation, and also the unease, that of a justice system forced to rule on old memories, rare traces, and lives already largely written, without the case ever truly leaving the present.
Community
Comments
Comments are open, but protected against spam. Initial posts and comments containing links undergo manual review.
Be the first to comment on this article.