Amajor 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.
The president of the commission that issued the report, Jean-Marc Sauve, said the estimate, based on scientific research, includes abuses committed by priests and others clerics as well as by non-religious people involved in the church. He said about 80 per cent are male victims.
“The consequences are very serious,” Sauve said. “About 60 per cent of men and women who were sexually abused encounter major problems in their sentimental or sexual life."
The 2,500-page document prepared by an independent commission comes as the Catholic Church in France, like in other countries, seeks to face up to shameful secrets that were long covered up.
The report says an estimated 3,000 child abusers — two-thirds of them priests — worked in the church during that period. Sauvé said the overall figure of victims includes an estimated 216,000 people abused by priests and other clerics.
Olivier Savignac, head of victims association “Parler et Revivre” (Speak out and Live again), who contributed to the probe, told The Associated Press that the high ratio of victims per abuser is particularly “terrifying for French society, for the Catholic Church." The commission worked for 2 1/2 years, listening to victims and witnesses and studying church, court, police and press archives starting from the 1950s. A hotline launched at the beginning of the probe received 6,500 calls from alleged victims or people who said they knew a victim.
Sauvé denounced the church's attitude until the beginning of the 2000s as “a deep, cruel indifference toward victims.” They were “not believed or not heard” and sometimes suspected of being “in part responsible” for what happened, he deplored.