Father Antonios and four other defendants who were tried in the case of physical abuse of children hosted at the “Ark of the World” were found guilty today by the Athens Appeals Court of the Third Chamber of the Criminal Court of Appeal (second degree). The president of the court pronounced its verdict after a lengthy evidentiary hearing. Today, however, all the defendants were absent from the stand when the verdict was delivered.

With today’s decision of the Court of Appeal, the priest was found guilty of more offences than he had been found guilty of at first instance. Specifically, in the second degree Father Anthony was found guilty of 9 of the 19 offenses for which he was tried, all of them misdemeanors. In contrast, in the first instance the priest was convicted of five acts.

Specifically, the Court of Appeal found the priest guilty on six counts of aggravated bodily harm to minors in the custody of the offender, instigating dangerous bodily harm to a minor, instigating simple bodily harm and instigating threats.

In the same decision, the members of the appellate court found four more associates of Father Antoniou guilty, including a former member of the management of the Ark of the World, the former head of pedagogues in Volos and the former director of the structure in Volos. These defendants were found guilty of acts of grievous bodily harm, dangerous bodily harm, simple bodily harm, threatening and exposure. On the contrary, the court fully exonerated two defendants in the case.

The court’s decision on the mitigating circumstances and subsequently on the sentences is now awaited.

It is recalled that in a previous session, the prosecutor of the Athens Court of Appeals for Criminal Matters, Panagiota Simigiani, had asked the court to declare Father Antonio and four other defendants guilty of specific charges in the case on a misdemeanor level.

Finally, it should be noted that in the first instance, Father Antonios had been sentenced to 51 months in prison (4 years and three months), while four of his associates had been sentenced to prison terms ranging from 17 to 40 months. Three convicts were granted parole while for Father Antonios and another convict, the sentence was commuted to ten euros per day.