By Matters India Reporter

New Delhi, May 2, 2022: A court in Kerala has awarded 18 years of rigorous imprisonment to a Catholic priest for sexually abusing four minor seminarians.

The Additional Sessions Court dealing with POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences) cases on April 29 found Father Thomas Parakalam guilty of the crime.

The 35-year-old priest is a member of Chennai-based Society of St Eugene de Mazenod.

The congregation’s authorities have neither responded to Matters India’s email queries nor attended phone calls regarding the current status of the accused.

The case began in 2016 when the police in Puthoor under Kottarakkara circle registered the case against the priest for committing offences punishable under Section 377 (unnatural offences) of the Indian Penal Code and other relevant sections of the POCSO Act.

The sexual abuse came to light after Child Welfare Committee in Thiruvananthapuram received a complaint. The victims, all aged 16 at the time of the incident, were the students of a seminary in Pullamala in Kollam district. The priest was its rector.

Judge K N Sujith found Father Thomas guilty. He was also a former vicar of Kottarakkara parish under the diocese of Punalur.

Sentencing the priest to five years each in three cases and three years sentence in the fourth case, Judge Sujith also ordered him to pay a compensation of 100,000 each for every case.

The court also recommended the District Legal Services Authority to award adequate compensation to the victims commensurate with the physical as well as mental trauma suffered by them.

“The factual circumstances emerged in the instant case would show that, attributing to sexual attack the victim boys were subjected to, they had suffered physical as well as mental trauma and ergo, it is necessary to rehabilitate them,” the court said.

The accused, who went absconding after escaping from police custody, was arrested from Chennai.

This is the latest case where a Catholic priest was punished for abusing minors.

On December 29, 2021, a POCSO court in Mumbai awarded life sentence to Father Lawrence Johnson of the archdiocese of Bombay, for sodomizing a teenage old boy in 2015. The priest was arrested in 2016.

In 2017, a POCSO court in Kerala’s Kannur district sentenced Father Robin Vadakkumchery of Kerala’s Mananthavady diocese to 20 years in prison for repeatedly raping and impregnating a 15-year-old girl. He was the parish priest of St Sebastian Church in Kottiyoor.

At least five major incidents of child abuse involving priests were reported in Kerala during 2015-2017.

The increase in such incidents led the Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council in 2017 to consider a protocol for priests and nuns who interact with students.

Father Varghese Vallikkatt, the council’s then deputy secretary and spokesperson, reportedly termed such cases as unfortunate

In the first POCSO conviction in Kerala, a court in Ernakulam on December 8, 2016, sentenced Father Edwin Figarez of Kottapuram diocese to undergo double life imprisonment for raping a minor girl. He was also ordered to pay a fine of 215,000 rupees.

Earlier in October that year, Father James Thekemuriyil, the rector of a seminary in Kannur district, was arrested for alleged sexual assault on a seminarian.

In 2014, Raju Kokkan, the vicar of the St Paul’s Church in Thaikkattussery, under Kerala’s Trichur archdiocese, was arrested for raping a nine-year-old girl several times.