Paris: Sexually Catholic French Catholics abuses around 216,000 children under seven decades since 1950, “big phenomenon” closed for decades with “veil of vice,” the Independent Commission said Tuesday.
Investigation of two and a half years the commission was asked by anger over the increasing number of abuse and prosecution against church officials throughout the world.
When claims against lay members of the Church such as teachers in Catholic schools including, the number of victims of child abuse rose to 330,000 since 1950.
“These numbers are more than worrying, they are burdensome and cannot remain without a response,” Head of the Jean Commission Marc Sauve told a press conference.
“Until the early 2000s, the Catholic Church showed deep and even cruel indulgence to the victims.” Archbishop Eric De Moulins-Beaufort, President of the French Bishop Conference (CEF), who likes the report, reveals “shame and horror” to his findings.
“My desire today is to ask for forgiveness from each of you,” he told a press conference.
Sauve criticized “systemic characters” efforts to protect the clergy of sex harassment claims and urge the church to pay reparations even though most cases far exceed the laws of prosecution.
The Church announced the last Spring plan for “financial contributions” for victims to start next year, and the commission report included 45 recommendations to stop child abuse by clergy.
“We expect a clear and concrete response by the church,” said the collective six victim associations.
The report, at almost 2,500 pages, found that “most” victims were pre-teenage boys from various social backgrounds.
“The Catholic Church, after a family and friend circle, the environment has the highest prevalence of sexual violence,” the report said.
Sauve has told AFP on Sunday that “minimum estimates” from 2,900 to 3,200 pastor members experienced sexually harassed children in the French church since 1950.
However, only a handful of cases that drive disciplinary actions under canonical law, especially criminal prosecution.
The Commission started his job after Pope Francis vowed to overcome the abuse by the priests in May 2019, ordered people to realize cases to report it to church officials.
In France, the case of Philippe Barbarin, a archbishop was initially punished for not telling the police about the harassment of a priest, drawing anger after he was released in January 2020.
Francois Devaux, Head of the victim’s association, condemned the “Deviant System” and called for the “Vatican system III “new to map the road ahead.
“You finally gave an institutional recognition to the victims of all the responsibilities of the Church, something whose bishop and the Pope were not ready to do,” Devaux said at a press conference.
Estimates of victims are mostly based on representative studies conducted by the Health and French medical research.
Sauve and his team consisting of 21 specialists, all of them were not affiliated with the Church, also interviewed hundreds of advanced people to tell their story.
“If the veil of silence that covers the actions taken finally turned off …
we owe the courage of these victims,” ​​he wrote.
The Commission also has access to police files and church archives, only quoting two cases of rejection by church institutions to reverse the required documents.
Overall, he found that 2.5 percent of France’s clergy since 1950 had sexually abused children, the ratio below 4.4 to 7 percent was revealed by similar questions in other countries.
While it will imply an extraordinarily high number of victims per attacker, “A sexual predator can actually have a high number of victims, especially those who attack boys,” said the report.
For the Head of Sauve Commission, to his retirement, one of the highest French-ranking civil servants, the final investigation regarding close to the house.
Shortly after receiving the job, he got a letter from a former classmate at his home school, said about abuse in the hands of the priest who gave them the two music lessons.
Sauve told Le Monde newspaper last month that his commission found that the priest – who then left school without warning – had harassed the dozens of others.