A former Polish priest, Tomasz Z., has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for denying help to a prostitute who fell ill after taking drugs at the orgy he had organized. The party was held at his parish residence in August 2023.
According to what the Polish press reported this Wednesday, the cleric has been found guilty of four crimes. Among them, “taking advantage of another person’s defenselessness to induce them to maintain sexual contact,” in addition to the use of illegal drugs.
In the trial, which took place behind closed doors, it was also ruled that the former clergyman must compensate the victim with compensation of almost 4,000 euros.
At the time of the events, Tomasz Z. was serving as parish priest of the sanctuary of the Virgin of the Angels in D?browa Górnicza (south). In the orgy, several other priests and a prostitute participated, who had been hired, and who ended up losing consciousness due to the drugs ingested.
When the ambulance arrived at the scene, the priest refused to let the nurses enter. As a consequence, the police had to go, which ended up making the incident public and making the case become media coverage.
For his part, Tomas Z. defended himself by attributing the criticism to “attacks against the Church, the clergy and believers.” However, the parish priest was relieved of his duties and decided to spend a few months in Türkiye.
“I think that if something similar had happened to a person with any other profession and not a clergyman, there would not have been any problem,” the former priest wrote on his social networks shortly after the incident.
The diocese of Sosnowiec (south), where Tomasz Z. served as a priest, has already been involved in other scandals in recent years: for example, the arrest of a seminarian for participating in a brawl in a gay club, as well as the murder of a priest by another priest who, after committing the crime, committed suicide by jumping in front of a train.
