Sexual abuse in the Church: around 3,000 pedophiles identified, according to the Sauvé report

Published on : 10/03/2021 – 09:11

The Sauvé report estimates the number of pedophiles identified in the Catholic Church in France since 1950 at 3,000, said Sunday, October 3, its author Jean-Marc Sauvé, in the JDD.

“We have estimated their number at 3,000, out of 115,000 priests and religious, since the 1950s”, said in an interview the president of the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (Ciase).

“Two-thirds are diocesan priests. We asked the bishops and superiors to relay our desire to hear the abusers. Finally, eleven authors agreed to be heard,” he added in the columns of the JDD.

Two and a half years after the creation of the Ciase, its president must submit his report on Tuesday to the Conference of Bishops of France (CEF) and to the Conference of Religious Men and Women of France (CORREF), who have instructed the commission to make the light on the sexual abuse of minors in the Church and to propose corrective and restorative measures.

Make way for the victims’ experiences, and multidisciplinary investigative work

Now 72 years old, this former great servant of the State has just spent nearly three years piloting this perilous mission, the conclusions of which, Tuesday, are likely to have the effect of a strong explosion.

Within this body that he himself chose and composed, Jean-Marc Sauvé forged a rather popular method: place given to the experiences of victims, public meetings, multidisciplinary investigative work (psychiatry, sociology, history, protection childhood, theology, law …).

Several members of Ciase, but also religious, praise the “rectitude” and the “honesty” of “a great man”, “great worker”.

As for the victims who wondered, at the start of work in 2019, about the real independence of this commission chaired by a “good-natured” Catholic and funded by the episcopate and religious orders, they seem satisfied.

François Devaux, co-founder of the association La parole Libérée, at the origin of the Preynat and Barbarin cases, concedes having been “surprised by his ethical principles, fundamentally republican” and his “concern to do the job as fair as possible”.

He was especially concerned with listening, with, “at home, a deep commiseration vis-à-vis the victims he was able to meet”, confides Philippe Portier, sociologist and member of the Ciase.

With AFP and Reuters