Documentary record Bound by Fear
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Conviction Christian institutions & contexts Orthodox Tetrakomo, Arta, Greece · 2015

Greece: village priest convicted of raping a girl from age seven over seven years, sentence confirmed on appeal

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

Stefano Verlekis, Greek Orthodox parish priest in the village of Tetrakomo, Arta region

Organization

Greek Orthodox Church, parish of Tetrakomo

Spiritual nexus

The perpetrator's standing as the village's Orthodox priest gave him routine, trusted access to the family home and to a village church used as one of the assault locations; the victim was a child of the parish, not a stranger, and his clerical role over an eight-year span is what made repeated access possible.

  • Pastoral or clerical authority

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. Date in cited record · conviction affirmed on appeal, following a prior acquittal overturned by the Greek Supreme Court (Άρειος Πάγος)

    Mixed Jury Court of Appeals of Ioannina, Greece. Verlekis, 72 at the time of the final verdict, was unanimously convicted of the rape and sexual abuse of a minor and sentenced to nine years' imprisonment. Because of his age the court ordered the sentence served under home confinement rather than in prison. The abuse ran from 2008 to 2015, beginning when the victim was seven; it came to light in 2015 when the victim's uncle, then a minor himself, reported it. An initial trial resulted in acquittal, which the Supreme Court overturned, leading to the retrial and conviction roughly a decade after the report.

Appellate history

  1. unspecified, prior to 2025

    Overturned an initial acquittal and returned the case for retrial, which produced the conviction recorded above.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • exploitation of the victim's family's financial vulnerability, using food deliveries to the home as a pretext for access
  • his status as the village's parish priest, using both the family home and a seasonally-operating village church as sites of the abuse
  • isolation of the child from protective adults over the multi-year period

Primary record

Sources

national newspaper court reporting court reporting Cretatimes, 'Άρτα: Ιερέας καταδικάστηκε σε εννέα χρόνια φυλάκισης για βιασμό και αποπλάνηση ανηλίκου' (in Greek).

Reports the nine-year sentence, the Mixed Jury Court of Appeals of Ioannina, and the home-confinement order due to age.

national newspaper court reporting court reporting SKAI, 'Ιερέας βίαζε για 7 χρόνια ένα κοριτσάκι - Καταδικάστηκε σε 9 χρόνια κάθειρξη' (in Greek).

National broadcaster's report giving the seven-year duration starting at age seven and the nine-year sentence.

national newspaper court reporting court reporting Protothema, 'Ιερέας καταδικάστηκε για βιασμό ανήλικης σε χωριό της Άρτας: Την κακοποίησε και μέσα σε εκκλησία' (in Greek).

Confirms the church itself as one of the abuse locations and the village setting.

Related record

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