“I was waiting for his forgiveness, I won’t get it,” reacts the spokesperson for the “Libere ta parole” collective

Sébastien Liautaud denounces the slowness of French justice and deplores “somewhat abusive postponements” of the trials against Jean-Marc Schoepff. The Nice priest was to be tried soon for sexual assault on minors.

“I was waiting for his forgiveness. I know I won’t get it”, reacts Saturday May 25 on France Bleu Azur, Sébastien Liautaud, spokesperson for the collective “Libère ta parole” after the death of Jean-Marc Schoepff. This Nice priest, who was to be tried soon for sexual assault on minors, died Friday at the age of 67, the Nice prosecutor’s office announced on Saturday. His death therefore puts an end to the public action.

Sébastien Liautaud, who filed a complaint against him in 2019, feels “anger”. He denounces the slowness of French justice. Speaking on behalf of the victims of the diocese of Nice gathered within the collective “Libère ta parole”, he deplores “somewhat abusive postponements”. Jean-Marc Schoepff was due to appear on January 8 before the Nice criminal court, but the trial of this former youth chaplain was postponed due to the state of health of one of the priest’s lawyers. It was rescheduled in September, seven years after the first complaints.

“If justice had been less complacent with the defense, continues Sébastien Liautaud, Jean-Marc Schoepff would have been judged and we, non-prescribed victims, would have had recognition which would have helped on our path to healing and that is not the case.” From now on, Sébastien Liautaud “counts on the repair of the Church” to be “at least” recognized as a victim “by an institution”. “It will lighten” even if “healing cannot be complete” and “I will carry this burden on my shoulders for a long time”he confides.

The affair broke out in 2017, with a complaint filed by the father of forty-year-old twins, one of whom had forgotten the facts, apart from dreams of touching, and the other did not dare to take the step. In total, nine people reported touching, mainly during outings or holiday camps. But the facts denounced mostly date back to the 1980s and are time-barred for seven plaintiffs.

Sébastien Liautaud is one of the two remaining plaintiffs. He filed a complaint in 2019 for facts dating from a trip to Rome in 1997. He was 11 years old at the time. He denounces sexual touching on the part of Jean-Marc Schoepff, then chaplain priest in a high school. The other complainant, born in 1982, places the facts in 1996, when he was a student at Stanislas, a renowned private Catholic establishment in Nice.

In September 2017, Jean-Marc Schoepff was banned from any ministry to minors by the Church hierarchy. He was then suspended as priest at the opening of the judicial investigation in 2018, when he was briefly incarcerated.