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

3 years ago 245

PARIS – The caput of France’s Catholic bishops league is asking forgiveness from the estimated 330,000 victims of kid enactment maltreatment by the religion recovered successful a groundbreaking report.

The study was released Tuesday aft extended probe successful France’s archetypal large reckoning with the issue.

The President of the Conference of Bishops of France, Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, said Tuesday “we are appalled” astatine the conclusions of the study and the numbers of victims.

“Their voices are shaking us, their numbers afflict us,” helium said.

“I privation connected that time to inquire for pardon, pardon to each of you,” helium told the victims.

The committee that compiled the study urged compensation for victims and beardown enactment from the church.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier communicative follows below.

PARIS (AP) — A large French study released Tuesday recovered that an estimated 330,000 children were victims of enactment maltreatment wrong France’s Catholic Church implicit the past 70 years, successful France's archetypal large reckoning with the devastating phenomenon.

The president of the committee that issued the report, Jean-Marc Sauvé, said the estimate, based connected technological research, includes abuses committed by priests and others clerics arsenic good arsenic by non-religious radical progressive successful the church. He said astir 80% are antheral victims.

“The consequences are precise serious,” Sauvé said. “About 60% of men and women who were sexually abused brushwood large problems successful their sentimental oregon intersexual life.”

The 2,500-page papers prepared by an autarkic committee comes arsenic the Catholic Church successful France, similar successful different countries, seeks to look up to shameful secrets that were agelong covered up.

The study says an estimated 3,000 kid abusers — two-thirds of them priests — worked successful the religion during that period. Sauvé said the wide fig of victims includes an estimated 216,000 radical abused by priests and different clerics.

Olivier Savignac, caput of victims relation “Parler et Revivre” (Speak retired and Live again), who contributed to the probe, told The Associated Press that the precocious ratio of victims per abuser is peculiarly “terrifying for French society, for the Catholic Church."

The committee worked for 2 1/2 years, listening to victims and witnesses and studying church, court, constabulary and property archives starting from the 1950s. A hotline launched astatine the opening of the probe received 6,500 calls from alleged victims oregon radical who said they knew a victim.

Sauvé denounced the church’s cognition until the opening of the 2000s arsenic “a deep, cruel indifference toward victims.” They were “not believed oregon not heard” and sometimes suspected of being “in portion responsible” for what happened, helium deplored.

Sauvé said 22 alleged crimes that tin inactive beryllium pursued person been forwarded to prosecutors. More than 40 cases that are excessively aged to beryllium prosecuted but impact alleged perpetrators who are inactive live person been forwarded to religion officials.

The committee issued 45 recommendations astir however to forestall abuse. These included grooming priests and different clerics, revising Canon Law — the ineligible codification the Vatican uses to govern the religion — and fostering policies to admit and compensate victims, Sauvé said.

The study comes aft a ungraded surrounding now-defrocked clergyman Bernard Preynat rocked the French Catholic Church. Last year, Preynat was convicted of sexually abusing minors and fixed a five-year situation sentence. He acknowledged abusing much than 75 boys for decades.

One of Preynat's victims, Francois Devaux, caput of the victims radical La Parole Libérée ("The Liberated Word"), told The Associated Press that “with this report, the French religion for the archetypal clip is going to the basal of this systemic problem. The deviant instauration indispensable betterment itself.”

He said the fig of victims the study identifies is “a minimum.”

"Some victims did not situation to talk retired oregon spot the commission,” helium said, expressing concerns that the religion successful France inactive “hasn’t understood” and has sought to minimize its responsibilities.

The religion indispensable not lone admit events but besides compensate victims, Devaux said. “It is indispensable that the religion redresses the harm caused by each these crimes, and (financial) compensation is the archetypal step.”

The Preynat lawsuit led to the resignation past twelvemonth of the erstwhile archbishop of Lyon, Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, who has been accused of failing to study the abuses to civilian authorities erstwhile helium learned astir them successful the 2010s. France’s highest tribunal ruled earlier this twelvemonth that Barbarin did not screen up the case.

French archbishops, successful a connection to parishioners work during Sunday Mass crossed the country, said the work of the study is “a trial of information and a pugnacious and superior moment.”

“We volition person and survey these conclusions to accommodate our actions,” the connection said. “The combat against pedophilia concerns each of america ... Our enactment and our prayers volition support going toward each the radical who person been abused wrong the church.”

Pope Francis issued successful May 2019 a groundbreaking caller religion instrumentality requiring each Catholic priests and nuns astir the satellite to study clergy intersexual maltreatment and cover-ups by their superiors to religion authorities.

In June, Francis swiftly rejected an connection from Cardinal Reinhard Marx, 1 of Germany’s astir salient clerics and a adjacent papal adviser, to resign arsenic archbishop of Munich and Freising implicit the church’s mishandling of maltreatment cases. But helium said a process of betterment was indispensable and each bishop indispensable instrumentality work for the “catastrophe” of the crisis.

___

Masha Macpherson contributed from Paris and Nicolas Vaux-Montagny contributed from Lyon, France.

Read Entire Article