Posted on 10/05/2021 5:47:59 PM PDT by marshmallow
Paris, France, Oct 5, 2021 / 05:45 am (CNA). Hundreds of thousands of children were abused in the Catholic Church in France over the past 70 years, an independent commission concluded on Tuesday.
The Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE) published its final report on Oct. 5 at a live-streamed presentation in Paris.
The almost 2,500-page report said that an estimated 216,000 children were abused by priests, deacons, monks, or nuns from 1950 to 2020.
It added that when abuse by other Church workers was also taken into account, “the estimated number of child victims rises to 330,000 for the whole of the period.”
Presenting the report, Jean-Marc Sauvé, president of CIASE, said: “While, in absolute and relative terms, these acts of violence were in decline up until the early 1990s, they have since stopped decreasing.”
“The Catholic Church is the place where the prevalence of sexual violence is at its highest, other than in family and friend circles.”
“Faced with this scourge, for a very long time the Catholic Church’s immediate reaction was to protect itself as an institution and it has shown complete, even cruel, indifference to those having suffered abuse.”
Matteo Bruni, director of the Holy See press office, said on Oct. 5 that Pope Francis was informed about the final report by the French bishops during their recent ad limina visits to Rome.
“His thoughts go first of all to the victims, with great sorrow, for their wounds, and gratitude, for their courage in speaking out, and to the Church of France, so that, in the awareness of this terrible reality, united to the suffering of the Lord for his most vulnerable children, she may undertake a path of redemption,” Bruni said.
“With his prayer, the pope entrusts to the Lord the People......
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicworldreport.com ...
I think they are deliberately clouding the numbers by defining abuse to include minor transgressions such as withholding desert at lunch to pad the numbers.
I wonder how many times “desert” was forced upon victims and not counted.
So you would say 1.2 to 1.8 million sexually abused children in France alone?
I believe there are many millions of cases of child sex abuse by predator priests across the world
That doesn’t mean all victims will ever come forward.
It is humiliating, there are emotional issues in reporting a religious leader. You’ve mixed up sexual shame, victimhood and religion into a toxic brew.
The ones that do come forward - often as adults in their 30s or later are the exception. Most quietly bear their shame.
As to the predator priests, they operated around the world. They were shuffled around to green pastures. They were known by bishops and the vatican for decades. And many are still priests today.
The abuse of someone like this is rarely a single event. 70% of child sex offenders have between one and 9 victims, while 20% have 10 to 40 victims.
The 300,000 that came forward in france are the tip of an iceberg, the bulk of which will never be seen publicly.
The Catholic church in France seems to accept the report in full.
French Catholic church expresses ‘shame’ after report finds 330,000 children were abusedPARIS (FRANCE)
The Guardian [London, England]
October 5, 2021
By Angelique Chrisafis
Church asks for forgiveness as it accepts findings of ‘appalling’ abuse by clergy and lay members over 70 years
The French Catholic church has expressed “shame” and pleaded for forgiveness, after a devastating report found that at least 330,000 children were victims of sexual abuse by clergy and lay members of church institutions over the past 70 years.
The publication of the landmark report on Thursday, France’s first major reckoning with what the Catholic church accepted was “appalling” abuse, has shaken the country with its horrific findings of a “massive phenomenon” of sexual abusers of children operating for decades within the church and its associated institutions.
The two-and-a-half-year independent inquiry found that staggering numbers of children were subjected to sexual violence by priests and clergy while the crimes were covered up in a “systemic way” by a deliberate “veil of silence” in the church.
The president of the investigative committee, Jean-Marc Sauvé, told a press conference: “Until the early 2000s the Catholic church showed a profound and even cruel indifference towards the victims.”
The report found an estimated 216,000 children were victims of sexual violence by French Catholic priests, deacons and other clergy from 1950 to 2020. When lay members of the Church, such as teachers and catechism supervisors, were included, the figure rose to at least 330,000 children sexually abused over 70 years.
It said the “vast majority” of victims were boys, who came from a wide variety of social backgrounds and who were attacked at a young age before reaching adolescence. Some sex offenders inside the church were “predators” on a vast scale who targeted extremely high numbers of children over long periods, with some attacking more than 150 victims.
Sauvé said the numbers of victims were “damning” and “in no way can remain without a response”. He urged the church to pay reparations even though most cases were well beyond the statute of limitations for prosecution. He recommended the Catholic church overhaul its internal legal system, reform its governance, rethink training and look at the dynamics that allowed the abuse to take place – namely the overwhelming power of priests and “the identification of a priest to Christ”.
The report made a “minimum estimate” of between 2,900 and 3,200 sexual abusers of children who operated in the French catholic church since 1950, yet it said only a handful of cases had prompted disciplinary action under canonical law, let alone criminal prosecution.
François Devaux, who set up the victims’ association La Parole Libérée, told church representatives at the public presentation of the report: “You must pay for all these crimes.”
He added: “You are a disgrace to our humanity … In this hell there have been abominable mass crimes … but there has been even worse, betrayal of trust, betrayal of morale, betrayal of children.” He accused the church of cowardice and condemned a “deviant system”, saying what was needed was a comprehensive response under a new “Vatican III” council led by Pope Francis.
Last year, Devaux’s attacker, the now defrocked priest Bernard Preynat, was convicted of sexually abusing minors and given a five-year prison sentence. Preynat acknowledged abusing more than 75 boys for decades.
Archbishop Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, president of the Bishops’ Conference of France, which co-requested the report, expressed his “shame and horror” at the findings. “My wish today is to ask forgiveness from each of you,” he told a news conference. He said: “The time for ambiguity and naïvity is over”, adding that he was “shaken” by the voices of survivors and the “unbearable” damage to the lives of children and young people.
Survivors who spoke out to report investigators included Claudette Couturier, 65, who told France TV that her first memories as a very young child were of being raped by three priests who took turns to attack her. She and her sister lived with her alcoholic grandmother. The priests would come to dinner then attack the children in their bedrooms. “They stole 13 years of my life,” Couturier said. She added that before she and her sister were able to be interviewed for the independent report, they had lived in silence, which was extremely damaging.
She said: “From the moment I didn’t denounce what was happening, it was me who was the disgusting one, me who was the guilty one. … With everything that happened to me, there was a profound thought that I was the one to blame because I let them do it.”
Sauvé and his team said victims had faced suffering, shame, isolation and often blame. In the report he wrote: “If the veil of silence covering the acts committed has finally been torn open … we owe it to the courage of these victims. Without their testimony, our society would still be unaware or in denial of what happened.”
The report found the huge scale of sexual abuse in the Catholic church was higher than in other institutions such as state schools, holiday camps and sporting organisations. “The Catholic church is, after the circle of family and friends, the environment that has the highest prevalence of sexual violence,” the report said.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/05/french-catholic-priests-abused-children-report
Pope is busy commenting on vaccines, immigration, pop culture in the US.
So abusing the children is just part of ‘tradition’ so many espouse they keep faith .. along with any denomination there will be an accounting. Jesus did not say ‘Remember Lot’s wife’ as empty warning. He knew what traditions of men would become… I am quite sure the ‘everybody’s doing it’ will not be ignored.
The percentage of French Catholics who actually have anything to do with the church is tiny, also.
I understand her grandmother was an alcoholic. Was she stupid as well, or in an alcohol-induced stupor every time this happened?
You make a great point. I have no idea... and I’d only be speculating on how or why a parent would do it.
Someone told me a story last year (and I’ve forgotten who), of being touched by a priest in an inappropriate way as a kid. He went home and told his dad. The dad and one or two of his brothers when to visit the priest and apparently roughed him up pretty good and warned him.
Of course, child abusers almost always go after fatherless kids. (They're evil, not stupid.)
So true
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