Even as the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church is being rocked by a sex scandal involving five priests who had allegedly abused a woman sexually by blackmailing her using her confession secret, a nun who has accused the Jalandhar Bishop of the Kerala-based Catholic Church of sexually abusing her several times said on Saturday that she was determined to go ahead with the legal proceedings against him.
“I have decided to go ahead with the legal proceedings. I have already shared all details with the concerned authorities and I don’t want to speak more about it at this point,” the nun told the media on Saturday. The police in Kottayam, Kerala had on the other day registered a case against the Bishop, a Keralite, charging him with rape on the basis of her complaint.
According to the nun’s statement to the police, the Bishop had sexually abused her 13 times between 2014 and 2016. He had first raped her on May 5, 2014 at a guest house adjacent to her convent at Kuravilangad near Kottayam when he had visited Kerala for a programme in Ernakulam, she said. The Bishop used to stay at this guest house during his Kerala visits.
She said that when she tried to resist further attempts to rape her, she was tortured mentally. As the persecution became unbearable, she submitted a complaint to Syro-Malabar Catholic Church’s head Cardinal Mar George Alencherry several months back, she said. However, the Church leadership allegedly chose not to take any action and tried to hush the matter.
The nun approached Kottayam district police chief Hari Shankar last week after the Church leadership had failed to take action. The Deputy Superintendent of Police, Vaikom, has been entrusted with the task of probing the charge. The police have already collected the nun’s statement and are also planning to get her statement recorded under Section 164 of the CrPC.
However, the Bishop claims that he is innocent. A complaint had earlier been lodged with the police for the Bishop saying that relatives of the nun had threatened him when he had arrived in Kuravilangad in connection with the inquiry being carried out by Church leadership. The police have registered a case against the nun also on the basis of this complaint.
“A woman approached us in November, 2016 saying this sister (nun) had a relationship with her husband and that she would go to the media if we did not take action. The allegations and provocative statements had started after a decision was taken to initiate action against her on the basis of this complaint,” the Bishop told a TV channel.
It is also alleged that relatives of the nun had threatened to kill him after he ordered a probe against her on the basis of the woman’s complaint. The police made it clear that they would go through the process carefully as both the complaints were extremely serious. They have already visited the convent and the guest house at Kuravilangad for collecting information.
The rape charge against a Bishop, that too coming from a nun belonging to a congregation of its own, is a huge blow to Kerala’s influential Catholic Church. Though many Catholic priests have been accused of sexual misconduct in the past, this is perhaps for the first time its entire history that one of its Bishops has been charged with rape.
Coming close on the heels of a sex scandal in the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church involving five priests who allegedly abused a young woman sexually by blackmailing her using her confession secret, the complaint of the Catholic nun against the Bishop has embarrassed the clergy of various Churches in Kerala.
Expressing anxiety at the recurrence of such scandals, former Syro-Malabar Church spokesman Fr Paul Thelekkatt told the media that the four-year-old issue should have been settled at the right forums within the church itself or in the court of law. He also said that the clergy should not fail in strictly observing the moral principles and ideals that they were supposed to follow.
Meanwhile, a three-man team of the police’s Crime Branch headed by SP Sabu Mathew recorded the statement of the man from Mallappally, Pathanamthitta who had accused five priests of the Orthodox Church of sexually abusing his wife by blackmailing her. He also handed over to them copies of the evidences supporting his allegations against the priests.