At least 3,000 victims and 1,500 attackers: a first assessment of the extent of pedocrime in the Church in France since 1950 was unveiled on Wednesday June 17 by the Sauvé commission, which must continue its work until the fall 2021.

"It is the first time" that such an estimate has been made in France, declared Jean-Marc Sauvé, the president of this commission, to AFP after having communicated these estimates during a videoconference.

In unison with the associations, he said he was "intimately convinced that there were many more victims", referring to "several thousand".

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These provisional figures come from a first feedback from surveys carried out in the archives of dioceses and religious congregations by the Independent Commission on sexual abuse in the Church (Ciase), set up in 2018 by the episcopate after several scandals .

At the same time, the telephone platform for calls for testimony set up by the commission a year ago received "5,300 calls," he said, adding that some people were likely to contact him several times. .

The difficulty, he explained, is to see if these two sources - calls to the platform and investigative work - could "combine". These figures "do not overlap but can add up in part," he said.

Call for evidence extended until October 31

"We can fear that the real number of victims, over the period concerned, is two, three or four times higher, because some do not report," added Véronique Margron, president of the Conference of men and women religious (sisters, brothers , etc.), which finances the work of Ciase alongside the episcopate. "It is necessarily a low assessment", she said, "which is to the credit of Ciase and its rigorous scientific method".

François Devaux, co-founder of the victims' association La Parole libéré, for his part, praised "an exceptional job never done in France in such a successful way". "What about the 'black figure', of all those we ignore in this quantification work?", He added however.

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"You have to take this number with tweezers. In my opinion, one in four or five victims speaks," said Olivier Savignac, head of another association of victims.

These data are still provisional insofar as the work of the Ciase continues: the call for testimony from victims is extended until October 31, and investigations into the archives are still in progress.

Other work suspended during confinement, such as hearing victims or public meetings in several large cities, will also resume.

Conclusions expected in the fall of 2021

To complete its approach, the Ciase, whose conclusions and recommendations are expected in the fall of 2021, is also in the process of gathering a sample of priests and religious "abusers". For Jean-Marc Sauvé, "in many cases, we have had abusers who have created, on a personal basis, a real system of abuse". Since 1950, the number of perpetrators of sexual assault in the Church cannot be "less than 1,500," he added.

Two thirds of sexual assaults took place in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, said the president of the Ciase, which has also made 25 reports to the prosecution.

These figures are unpublished. The Conference of Bishops had published some statistics, but relating to more restricted fields and a very recent period.

>> Read: Pedocrime: ex-father Preynat sentenced to five years in prison for sexual assault

In October 2018, it pointed out that out of 15,000 French priests, ten were then under investigation and four others imprisoned for pedocrime. She also noted that 220 people had come forward to the dioceses, to the listening cells welcoming victims, between 2010 and 2016 and 211 between 2017 and 2018.

"We are helped and inspired by the work of our predecessors," said Jean-Marc Sauvé, referring, among other things, to Ireland, Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. Authorities responsible for investigating their clergy, following the revelation of scandals, have shown that sexual abuse has been committed on a large scale.

With AFP

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