India: priest convicted of raping a nine-year-old preparing for her First Communion at his church
Request a correction or replyRecord class
Core record
Evidence status
Convicted
Authority role
Catholic priest, St Paul's Church, near Thrissur
Organization
St Paul's Church
Archive classification
This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.
The victim was a child of the parish attending the defendant's own First Communion catechism classes; that instructional-pastoral authority is what let him isolate her under a dress-fitting pretext.
- Pastoral or clerical authority
Evidence structure
Proceedings
2022-12-28 · conviction and sentence
POCSO fast-track court, Thrissur, Kerala, India. Fr Raju Kokken was convicted of raping a nine-year-old girl from a low-income family who was attending his church's First Communion preparation classes; he lured her into his private office on the pretext of fitting her communion dress and assaulted her on three dates in April 2014. He was sentenced to seven years' rigorous imprisonment and a Rs 50,000 fine, with the verdict coming nearly nine years after the offence, following his flight and arrest in Tamil Nadu.
Documented coercion mechanisms
- clerical authority over a child attending his First Communion classes
- promise of free communion vestments to a low-income family
Cited record
Sources
- partisan outlet lead index verdict and sentencing report 'POCSO court sentences paedophile padre Kokken after nine long years', HinduPost, Dec. 2022.
Report of the conviction and sentence, including the First Communion catechism context and the nine-year delay from arrest to verdict.
- national newspaper court reporting investigative report 'The Sins Of Our Fathers', Outlook India.
National-magazine roundup corroborating the Kokken conviction among a survey of Kerala clergy-abuse cases.
Source provenance
Source access and integrity log
This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.
- Source and tier basis
- https://hindupost.in/crime/pocso-court-sentences-pedophile-kokken/ Corpus classification: partisan-outlet-lead-index; evidentiary role: verdict-and-sentencing-report. SHA-256 4654d5fe47e3b0a23db2b71814ef304ce9fcd47e3d782112572a1648ab85b99c
- Retrieval
- 2026-07-20 · Preserved
- Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
- Source and tier basis
- https://www.outlookindia.com/national/the-sins-of-our-fathers-news-298386 Corpus classification: national-newspaper-court-reporting; evidentiary role: investigative-report. SHA-256 c46471e2bca124ac3f2bb7317a08b8c18668bb60d7b4a54e7b27fb7a29f112bb
- Retrieval
- 2026-07-20 · Preserved
- Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
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Related record
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