WARSAW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 12th May, 2019) Poland may toughen penalties for pedophilia, increasing the maximum prison sentence for the offense to 30 years, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the head of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, said on Sunday.
In 2010, Poland enacted a law on chemical castration for pedophiles accused of incest or of sexually abusing minors under the age of consent, which stands at 15 years in the country. Apart from that, the maximum prison sentence for pedophiles was raised from 12 to 15 years.
"We have prepared amendments to the Criminal Code, under which these crimes [related to pedophilia] will be punished much more strictly than they are now ... There will be no conditional sentences. Severe sentences will be introduced, perhaps, even up to 30 years in jail," Kaczynski said at a PiS meeting in the northwestern Polish city of Szczecin.
Commenting on recurrent sex-related scandals within the Catholic Church, Kaczynski stressed that "disgusting crimes by several priests" could not serve as a pretext for attacking the Polish Catholic Church.
The Polish Catholic Church revealed in March a report on sexual abuses of minors by Polish clergymen. The report showed that between 1999 and 2018 the Polish clergy sexually abused 624 victims, including around 200 people aged under 15.
