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GLASGOW - The small church of St Simon's in Glasgow is always packed on a Sunday. Yesterday it was overflowing as the faithful celebrated the holiest day of the Catholic year.
Glasgow's growing Polish immigrant population favours St Simon's because Mass is said in their own language.
It is also where the congregation of nearby St Patrick's must now worship. That church has been closed since last September, when the body of a Polish student was discovered under the floor near the confessional.
Angelika Kluk, 23, was bound and gagged and she had been beaten.
It was a shocking discovery, but now Scotland is agog at the extraordinary revelations of illicit sex and alcoholism that have been made during the trial of her alleged killer, Peter Tobin, a handyman at the church. All the more so, since the man who admits sleeping with Kluk and to having a drink problem is Father Gerard Nugent, the priest at St Patrick's.
Kluk, who was studying Scandinavian languages at Gdansk University, was spending the summer in Glasgow to earn money to continue her studies.
It was her second summer in the city where her sister, Aneta, 28, also lives. The student had struck a deal with Nugent, 63, that she would clean the church in return for accommodation in a small room in the chapel house.
It seemed an ideal arrangement. But when Nugent took the witness stand at Edinburgh High Court, he confessed to breaking his vows of chastity by having sex with Kluk. The relationship, he claimed, was short, just a couple of weeks over the end of August and beginning of September.
"I felt guilty," said the priest. "I felt ashamed and I was disgusted with myself. I take full responsibility. I knew it was wrong and I knew I was doing wrong. I knew I had to stop that part of the relationship."
He denied that he had been in love with the student and conceded he had betrayed her trust. He also admitted that he had been an alcoholic 10 years ago and started drinking again around the time he met Kluk.
Kluk had been missing for five days before her body was found on 29 September. Strathclyde Police found it in a void under the floorboards close to the confessional of St Patrick's. The space was easily accessed by a trap door.
Peter Tobin, 60, did odd jobs at the church using the name Pat McLaughlin. He had gone missing shortly after her disappearance, but was arrested in October and accused of rape and murder.
The prosecution claims he covered Kluk's mouth with tape and bound her hands before repeatedly striking her with a piece of wood or similar object, stabbing her with a knife and then concealing the body.
He is also charged with trying to pervert the course of justice by telling police he was called Patrick McLaughlin, and by claiming to staff at the National Neurology and Neurosurgery Hospital in London that his name was James Kelly.
Tobin denies all charges and has lodged a special defence stating that he had consensual sex with Kluk.
Kluk's love life was complicated. She had a 40-year-old married boyfriend, Martin MacAskill, a chauffeur who called her Angela and whose wife knew of their relationship.
"I always got the impression they were friends," Martin MacAskill told the court when questioned about her relationship with the priest.
Kluk's sister Aneta did not approve of the relationship with MacAskill.
But on September 25 she and MacAskill went together to St Patrick's to look in Kluk's room, where they found her purse, her passport and a diary entry recording her love for MacAskill. There was also a ticket for a flight to Poland. She was due to return in October.
Aneta Kluk had harsh words for Nugent. She branded the priest an alcoholic, described him as "a Jekyll and Hyde character" and dismissed as "outrageous" his claims to have slept with her sister.
There were more accusations in store for Nugent. Tobin is represented by one of Scotland's highest-paid QCs, Donald Findlay. In court, he called the priest a "coward and a liar" and accused him of knowing that Kluk's body had been concealed beneath the floor of his church during the five days she was believed missing.
Throughout, the priest repeated: "I was not responsible for the death and I know nothing about the circumstances concerning the measure of death."
The trial, which is expected to last six weeks, will resume tomorrow.
- INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
