French Church abuse: Victims demand action after inquiry
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Since 1950, clergy in the organisation have sexually abused some 216,000 children, according to the report - mostly boys.
Pope Francis "felt pain" on hearing about the inquiry's finding, a Vatican statement said.
Those abused are demanding compensation after the revelations.
François Devaux, who founded the former victims' association La Parole Libérée (Freed speech), said there had been a "betrayal of trust, betrayal of morale, betrayal of children".
He called for compensation for the victims. "You must pay for all these crimes," he said twice on stage at a launch event for the report.
Another survivor, Olivier Savignac, who is the head of victims association Parler et Revivre (Speak out and Live again), described the report as "an earthquake". He similarly called for "real compensation" for those affected.
"It's not simply a couple of thousand euros - with a little payment, we sweep it away. No. It's about a real compensation based on the suffering of each person."
The French Church has previously announced a plan for "financial contributions" to victims, beginning next year.
A group of victims' associations said they expected "clear and concrete responses by the Church" in light of the inquiry.
According to the report there were at least 2,900-3,200 abusers. It said the number of children abused in France could rise to 330,000, when taking into account abuses committed by lay members of the Church such as teachers at Catholic schools, and also called for the victims to be compensated.
The Vatican statement said the Pope had expressed "deep sadness" for the victims, hailing "their courage in coming forward".
The report's release follows a number of abuse claims and prosecutions against Catholic Church officials worldwide.
The independent inquiry was commissioned by the French Catholic Church in 2018. It spent more than two-and-a-half years combing through court, police and Church records and speaking to victims and witnesses.
Most cases assessed by the inquiry are thought to be too old to prosecute under French law.
'Victims were not believed'
The report, which is nearly 2,500 pages long, said the "vast majority" of victims were boys, many of them aged between 10 and 13.
It said the Church had not only failed to prevent abuse but had also failed to report it, at times knowingly putting children in contact with predators.
"There was a whole bunch of negligence, of deficiency, of silence, an institutional cover-up," the head of the inquiry, Jean-Marc Sauvé, told reporters on Tuesday.
He said that until the early 2000s, the Church had shown "deep, total and even cruel indifference" towards victims.
"The victims are not believed, are not listened to. When they are listened to, they are considered to have perhaps contributed to what they had happen to them," he explained.
He added that sexual abuse within the Catholic Church continued to be a problem.
While the commission found evidence of as many as 3,200 abusers - out of a total of 115,000 priests and other clerics - it said this was probably an underestimation.
"The Catholic Church is, after the circle of family and friends, the environment that has the highest prevalence of sexual violence," the report said.
Moreover, the inquiry found that about 60% of the men and women who were abused had gone on to "encounter major problems in their emotional or sexual lives".
Only a handful of the cases covered by the inquiry had prompted any disciplinary action, let alone criminal prosecutions.
But while most cases are now too old to prosecute via the courts, the inquiry called on the Church to take responsibility for what happened, including by providing compensation to the victims.
It noted that while financial compensation would not address the trauma that victims had endured, it was "nonetheless indispensable as it completes the recognition process".
It also made a series of recommendations about how to prevent abuse, including training priests and other clerics, and fostering policies to recognise victims.
This was over 70 years and more than half the cases were before 1970. But still - for many French this will be the moment they wake up to the sheer scale of the phenomenon of Church sexual abuse. What was once anecdotal and prurient is suddenly a defining feature of society.
The burden of the report is that ad-hoc expressions of repentance and a bit of tinkering with ecclesiastical structures are no longer good enough.
There has to be recognition that sexual abuse of youngsters by priests was systematic. It was the Church - not rogue individuals - that was responsible.
Many in the Church will be horrified by what they discover. Many will welcome the moment as a catharsis. As Sister Veronique Margron, president of the Conference of Religious Orders, put it: "If the Church must tremble, well let it tremble."
The president of the Bishops' Conference of France, who co-requested the report, said the numbers of victims and their experiences were "beyond what we could imagine".
"I express my shame, my fear, my determination to act with them [the victims] so that the refusal to see, the refusal to hear, the desire to hide or mask the facts, the reluctance to denounce them publicly, disappears," Archbishop Eric de Moulins-Beaufort said.
And another clergyman, Monsigneur Emmanuel Gobillard, told the BBC's Newshour programme that this was a "very important moment" for the church.
"We know it's systemic, we know it's huge," he said. "We cannot just go for cosmetic changes, we really need deep reform."
Earlier this year, Pope Francis changed the Roman Catholic Church's laws to explicitly criminalise sexual abuse, in the biggest overhaul of the criminal code for nearly 40 years.
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If one wants to blame the rise of secularism on something, start with organized religion.
There are approximately 60,000 children sexually abused IN AMERICA every year.
Child Maltreatment & Neglect Statistics | American SPCC
This is not to excuse the Catholic Church, this is to say that what the Catholic Church is accused of, here and around the world such as France, is the tip of the iceberg.
Child sexual abuse is a society wide problem, it is not only a Catholic Church problem. The vast majority of child sexual abuse is not committed by Catholic priests.
The abuse occurs everywhere and you are correct, it is not limited to the Catholic church. However the Catholic church has gone to insane lengths and costs to hide and protect the members that have committed these crimes, even to this day. I believe that is where the true outrage lies..
No, but it certainly is a problem in the Catholic Church organization. So while it is not possible to solve this problem across the entire planet, the Catholic Church, as an organization, is well suited to solve this problem within their domain.
What is taking so long?
Nearly 2000 years of absolute control?
That is a pretty sad finding any way you look at it.
That's a step in the right direction
Very difficult to imagine why such widespread abuse has been allowed to continue in an organization that is ostensibly crucially concerned with morality.
It boggles the mind.
In a way, I can see how this is a slap in the face to all. But, men/women have been abusing/using other men/women since the beginning of time. Hell, Aristotle, Sophocles, Heroditojs not only talked and wrote about it, they practiced it as well.
BUT, they were not in a religious community that condoned such practice. I mean, hell, no one knows who made the rules that are ascribed to be the "Ten Commandments"? Where are they? Who wrote them? Why did no one know of them until after 360 AD when the Roman Church was getting started. Other than the Bible hadn't even been written yet by the fellas sitting around drinking mead one day, there were no "written" church rules/policies regarding sexual behaviour, so young'n's were/are fair game.
I may be wrong but the Jews had the Torah long before the Council of Nicea
Yes'm - but, the Jewish population is only 11.2M, world-wide, where as the Catholic membership is 1.254B world-wide. Can't quite figure out what that means, but . . . . . The research I've done ranges from 380 BCE to 1008 AD as to when the many pieces of the Dead Sea scrolls were put together to make the "complete" Torah.
So, depends.
The Spanish Inquisition did a lot to deplete the Jewish population...along with Churches in other countries.
The Chinese also had 10 Commandments 500 BC
Ah yes, the RCC once again condemning sexual abuse by their clergy. I've been hearing this BS for decades.
Same shit different day, different country.
Hey, they are consistent.
Given the history of the church, this will be forgotten just as it has in the past with no convictions and pedophile priests running rampant all over the world.
History supports your prediction. Do you have thoughts on why the Catholic Church does not take serious actions to stop this?
They have enough problems with people choosing the religious life (priests, nuns) so they keep what they have because replacing them is difficult
I think they haven't taken any serious action because they have been able to get away with it for so long. It doesn't help that for the most part, this is the "shiny object" that caught everybody's attention. Give it some time, another "shiny object" will be held up and this will no longer be getting any attention and it's back to business as usual.
While I can't provide anything substantial, and we all suspect it, I'm pretty sure there is some high levels of corruption between the church and many in the political and law enforcement worlds as well.
I just cannot comprehend why they have been able to get away with this. The obvious answer is that all Catholics cut them slack (much as Trump supporters overlook his abysmal character). But given the subject matter is pedophilia by priests, one would think people would be able to break free of their confirmation bias and demand that this simply stop.
People are strange and often irrational creatures that live in a comfortable artificial reality fabricated by their minds.
No, we don't. I know people who left the church when this all started coming out. I was one of them
I think they get away with it due to come level of corruption between the church and law enforcement. Some form of quid pro quo. What I don't understand is why the followers keep quiet. There have been reports of pay outs to the accusers family but that guarentees is silence. No arrests, convictions, nothing.
And here i thought we were having an actual conversation.
The problem with that is when they leave, knowing these issues exist (maybe some in the very church they went to) they are silent. This would be something that I wouldn't be able to sit idly by with.
I never experienced any abuse. I left the church because Pope Benny didn't take any of it seriously and I didn't want to be associated with a church that turns a blind eye to pedophilia and sexual abuse
I turned my back on the church for several different reasons. I won't put up with hypocrisy.
Exactly.
What is the problem? A parenthetical example of overlooking bad ...
... is not an actual conversation if Trump is mentioned?
I doubt that you disagree that Trump supporters overlook his abysmal character so what is the problem? I think my example was spot on and timely. Catholics clearly have been overlooking terrible acts by the RCC. That same phenomenon is seen with people overlooking Trump's abysmal character. People are capable of selective reality where we downplay certain elements (as if they do not exist) and continue on with those elements we accept.
Agreed, the followers are silent. They might be largely compartmentalizing (and downplaying) this as noted. What might be happening instead is just attrition. Possibly fewer people are attending masses and donating to the church. I know that my Catholic friends and family are (as a whole) no longer consistent attendees.
It's a pathetic attempt to make this political. It's not.
No, Jeremy, there was no attempt to make it political. It was a very good example (in parenthesis) to support my point.
Get a grip. The mere mention of the letters TRUMP —in parenthesis even— in an example does not make the entire post political.
Then why even mention it. It had nothing to do with the subject of the article or what we were talking about.
As an example of what I was talking about !
Hello?
In some of the cases, there is a connection between the RCC and politicians.
It happened in South Dakota and it currently happening in Canada.
And I imagine those same connections also run with law enforcement allowing pedophile priests to be moved around. Those are something that I've heard about for decades but never really had anything to back them up.
I'm not sure about law enforcement, but it certainly seems possible. The South Dakota case was blatant and the lawyer for the RCC was allowed to write the bill that the SD legislature passed to stop the Native American children that were sexually abused by the RCC from suing.
There is an ongoing case in Canada as we speak, and it is just as ugly the government let the RCC out of a fine of $25 million owed to the First Nations people for sexual abuse. The shit is hitting the fan.
The law enforcement piece is something that, I'm sure we all suspect but don't have definitive proof of. It's hard for something like this to go on for so long and have protection from politicians and not law enforcement.
It's sad that this really isn't surprising.
No, it isn't, the RCC history with Native Americans, First Nations, and Alaska Natives is horrific.
Seems anywhere the RCC "set up shop" seems to be done by other than pleasant means.
Good for them & more power to them.