The founder of a French alternative school that took students on boat trips on the high seas was sentenced Friday to 12 years in prison for the rape and sexual abuse of five children. Leonide Kameneff, 76, was on trial with three former staff and crew for the rape and sexual abuse of nine former pupils between 1981 and 1994. Kameneff, a former child psychotherapist, got the harshest sentence requested by prosecutors, who had asked the Paris criminal court for minors to jail him for 10 to 12 years.

A Spanish court handed a 302-year jail sentence Friday to a karate champion for raping dozens of pupils at his martial arts school in the country's biggest ever paedophilia scandal. Fernando Torres Banea held "orgies" involving minors at his school and chalet in Las Palmas on the Canary Islands, telling his pupils that sex would make them better at karate, said judge Salvador Alba, reading out his ruling.

As cardinals prepare for the conclave to elect the next pope, the victims of sex abuse by clergymen are trying to ensure the vote doesn't go to anyone they accuse of helping cover up the scandal. The Catholic hierarchy had a final day of talks in Rome on Monday before going into lockdown in the Sistine Chapel for the vote, after former pontiff Benedict XVI's shock resignation -- the first for 700 years.

Britain's most senior Roman Catholic cleric resigned as head of the Catholic Church in Scotland with immediate effect on Monday in the wake of claims that he made sexual advances towards priests. Cardinal Keith O'Brien -- who steps down as Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh -- denies the allegations, which date back to the 1980s, but he apologised to anyone offended by "failures" during his ministry. The 74-year-old had been due to be the only British cardinal to vote on a replacement for Pope Benedict XVI following the pontiff's shock resignation on February 11.