Priest again fails to testify in child pornography case

A priest charged with possessing child pornography was unable to testify at his trial again on Wednesday because there was not enough time, LRT reported. The Vilnius City District Court questioned another defendant, Barbara Leščevska, who denied the charges.

“There wasn’t enough time. There were various questions and other procedural decisions,” Ryšardas Pečiūnas told reporters after the hearing. His lawyer, Vytenis Dziegoraitis, said the hearing had been scheduled to run until 11 a.m. Pečiūnas is expected to be questioned when proceedings resume on Friday.

Leščevska said she had explained the circumstances related to each point in the indictment but did not admit guilt. Her lawyer, Tomas Januškevičius, said she had given detailed testimony and answered questions from the court and other participants. He said the case could take several hearings and might require specialists to be questioned.

The trial is being held behind closed doors. Leščevska said in September that she was surprised prosecutors treated every instance of nudity as pornography. She said the images in question included everyday photographs of her sister’s children and old photographs of children of close friends, taken in neutral settings.

Leščevska said she was accused of possessing child pornography in the form of temporary browser files, known as cache, which are created automatically while browsing. She said such files were found on an old computer she had not used since 2017. The computer was found at Pečiūnas’s home, but Leščevska did not say how it came to be there. She also said her friends’ children had been recognised as victims in the case, but her sister’s children had not.

Pečiūnas, who worked in the Vilnius Archdiocese and has been temporarily suspended from his duties, says recordings found by investigators were sent to him by the parents of minors with whom he had been close for decades. Both he and Leščevska are charged under Article 309, Part 2 of the Criminal Code.