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French report: 330,000 children victims of church sex abuse

Published:Tuesday | October 5, 2021 | 11:32 AM
Commission president Jean-Marc Sauve (left) hands copies of the report to Catholic Bishop Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, president of the Bishops' Conference of France (CEF), during the publishing of a report by an independent commission into sexual abuse by church officials (Ciase), Tuesday, October 5, 2021, in Paris. A major French report released Tuesday found that an estimated 330,000 children were victims of sex abuse within France's Catholic Church over the past 70 years, in France's first major reckoning with the devastating phenomenon. (Thomas Coex, Pool via AP)

PARIS (AP) — Victims of abuse within France's Catholic Church welcomed a historic turning point Tuesday after a new report estimated that 330,000 children in France were sexually abused over the past 70 years, providing the country's first accounting of the worldwide phenomenon.

The figure includes abuses committed by some 3,000 priests and an unknown number of other people involved in the church — wrongdoing that Catholic authorities covered up over decades in a “systemic manner,” according to the president of the commission that issued the report, Jean-Marc Sauvé.

The 2,500-page document was issued as the Catholic Church in France, like in other countries, seeks to face up to shameful secrets that were long covered up.

Victims welcomed the report as long overdue and the head of the French bishops' conference asked for forgiveness from them.

The report said the tally of 330,000 victims includes an estimated 216,000 people abused by priests and other clerics, and the rest by church figures such as scout leaders or camp counsellors.

The estimates are based on a broader research by France's National Institute of Health and Medical Research into sexual abuse of children in the country.

The study's authors estimate 80% of the church's victims were boys, while the broader study of sexual abuse found that 75% of the overall victims were girls.

The independent commission urged the church to take strong action, denouncing its “faults” and “silence.” It also called on the Catholic Church to help compensate the victims, notably in cases that are too old to prosecute via French courts.

“We consider the church has a debt towards victims,” Sauvé said.

Francois Devaux, head of the victims' group La Parole Libérée (The Liberated Word), said it was “a turning point in our history.”

He denounced the coverups that permitted “mass crimes for decades.”

“But even worse, there was a betrayal: betrayal of trust, betrayal of morality, betrayal of children, betrayal of innocence,” he added.

Martine, 73, and Mireille, 71, were sexually assaulted by a priest when they were teenage girls in high school.

They both declined to give their last name due to privacy reasons, in part because some family members were not aware of the abuses.

The commission worked for 2 1/2 years, listening to victims and witnesses and studying church, court, police and news archives starting from the 1950s. Sauvé denounced the church's attitude until the beginning of the 2000s as “a deep, cruel indifference toward victims.”

“Sometimes church officials did not denounce (the sex abuses) and even exposed children to risks by putting them in contact with predators,” he stressed.

The president of the Conference of Bishops of France, Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, said French bishops “are appalled” at the conclusions of the report.

“I wish on that day to ask for pardon, pardon to each of you,” he told the victims.

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