The first report on the sexual assaults committed by Abbé Pierre, published on 17 July, had a great impact. The same will probably happen with the new note published by the Emmaus movement (Emmaus International, Emmaus France and the Abbé Pierre Foundation) on Friday 6 September. The testimonies are this time more numerous and cover a long period of more than fifty years. Among them, several “report serious events of another nature” than those described above, warns the twenty-six-page document.
These revelations emerge from a call for testimony opened on July 17, when the movement, “upset”The Egaé group had made public the results of an internal investigation, entrusted to an independent company, the Egaé group. Seven testimonies emerged, including that of A., daughter of a couple of friends of Abbé Pierre. It was she who, in 2023, contacted him to testify about the attacks she had suffered since 1980, when she was between 16 and 17 years old. She and other women, most of whom were employees or volunteers of an Emmaus structure, reported advances that were often insistent and repeated, as well as unsolicited physical contact: touching of the breasts, forced kisses. The events took place from the end of the 1970s to 2005, when Abbé Pierre was 65 or older.
This new report, also produced by the Egaé group, presents seventeen testimonies. They recount events spanning half a century. The most recent occurred just two years before Abbé Pierre’s death in 2007, at the age of 94. The oldest date back to the early 1950s, when Abbé Pierre, a former resistance fighter who became a member of parliament, became known for his commitment to combating precarious housing, poverty and exclusion. Most of the accusations are similar to those published in July. But other events described are distinguished by their victims – women in material poverty who had asked the clergy for help, but also minors, one of whom was only 8 or 9 years old – and by their nature.
Economic vulnerability
A woman heard by Egaé indicated that her mother, who died a few years ago, had been forced on several occasions by Abbé Pierre to perform fellatio, that is, oral penetration that the courts would classify as rape. J., according to Egaé’s initial choice, had also had to witness the priest’s masturbation, and “He also allegedly whipped her or whipped himself in front of her with a belt. He allegedly mentioned wanting to have sex with her and another woman.The note adds. J. had mentioned these facts, which date back to 1989, in a letter sent in 2019 to the independent commission on sexual abuse in the Church (Ciase). Ciase investigators briefly reported on this in a column published on July 20 by The worldand her daughter detailed them in the newspaper Releaseon August 25, explaining that his mother was then in a situation of extreme deprivation.
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