The court of Santa Maria Capua Vetere sentenced Father Gianfranco Roncone, former parish priest of Presenzano, a municipality in the Alto-Casertano area, to a year and a half in prison with a suspended sentence for possession of child pornography.
The parish priest, however, was acquitted because the fact did not exist, from the more serious charge of sexual violence against a minor under 16 and from the crime of inducing a 17-year-old into child prostitution (both adolescents are Albanian).
The Santa Maria Capua Vetere Prosecutor's Office had requested a prison sentence of eight years and six months for the priest (represented by lawyers Renato Jappelli and Dario Mancino). The priest was suspended from the Diocese of Teano on Christmas Eve 2020 after an investigation was opened against him for sexual abuse of two minors (one of whom had reported him after the events that occurred in August 2020).
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A few months later, in April 2021, investigations by the Prosecutor's Office and the Carabinieri of Capua led to Don Roncone being placed under house arrest, which was later revoked the following August following the evidentiary hearing that brought the priest face to face with his two accusers.
During the confrontation, some discrepancies emerged in the account given by one of the two victims, so the investigating judge replaced the house arrest with a mandatory residence in the municipality of Sparanise, the priest's home town.
Today, Father Roncone is free from all charges. The investigation began in August 2020 after the parish priest was caught by a Carabinieri patrol from the Capua branch in a car in an isolated area near the Presenzano cemetery, accompanied by two young men. During the investigation, child pornography material was seized from the priest, for which he was convicted.
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