"Holy Crimes": Sexual Abuse by an Imposter Priest

The paper reports a case of prolonged sexual abuse against five minors perpetrated by an individual passing himself as a catholic clergy member. The case was brought to our attention within an expert investigation. Multiple levels (psychiatric, psychological, forensic, ethno-anthropological and communicative) characterize the dynamics, situations and meanings of the case. Such complexity underlines the need to combine the contribution of experts from different fields who complement each other, in order to achieve a full understanding of the specificity of the case, which stands in the dense network of perturbations caused by a double betrayal of the trust of the basic relationships of human sociality.