Philip Wilson NEW DELHI, July 03 (Agencies): Indian police said Tuesday they are investigating four Christian priests for allegedly raping and blackmailing a woman in a cycle of abuse and threats lasting almost 20 years.
The woman told police that her ordeal began while still a minor in the 1990s when an Orthodox priest at a church in the southern state of Kerala forced her into sex.
She confessed to a second priest, who allegedly blackmailed her into having sex with him. A further two priests also threatened her and forced her into sex, the woman, who has not been named, told investigators.
"We filed a case on Monday based on her complaint. We have now started our investigation," local police official S. Sreejith told AFP.
Her alleged suffering only came to light after an audio clip of her husband complaining to a church official went viral on social media, media reports said.
The Christan community in India, as elsewhere around the world, has been rocked by sexual abuse allegations.
Last year, a pastor accused of raping two women on the pretext of driving out evil spirits was arrested in eastern India.
In 2016, an Indian priest was sentenced to 40 years in prison for raping a 12-year-old girl.
Christianity is India's third-biggest religion according to the 2011 census, with approximately 28 million followers or 2.3 percent of the population.
Meanwhile, a Catholic archbishop in Australia has been given a maximum sentence of 12 months in detention for concealing child sexual abuse in the 1970s.
Philip Wilson, now archbishop of Adelaide, is the most senior Catholic globally to be convicted of the crime.
He was found guilty by a court last month of covering up abuse by a paedophile priest in New South Wales.
On Tuesday, the court ordered Wilson to be assessed for "home detention" - meaning he will probably avoid jail.
Magistrate Robert Stone said the senior clergyman had shown "no remorse or contrition". He will be eligible for parole after six months.
Wilson has not resigned as archbishop, despite relinquishing his duties in the wake of his conviction.
In May, a court found he had failed to report his colleague James Patrick Fletcher's abuse of altar boys to police.
Wilson, then a junior priest in the Maitland region, had dismissed young victims in a bid to protect the Church's reputation, Magistrate Stone ruled.
Fletcher was convicted of nine child sexual abuse charges in 2004, and died in jail two years later.
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