Petrocrime in the Church: the compensation body has ruled on 40 requests

Europe 1 with AFP 6:27 p.m., September 5, 2022

The Independent National Authority for Recognition and Reparation (Inirr) has ruled on 40 cases of victims of pedocrime in the Church, affirms the president of this authority, who specifies that "more than 700" situations await to be taken into account. .

"Today, nearly 40 decisions have been rendered, including nearly 30 with a financial component", writes Marie Derain de Vaucresson, president of INIRR in a letter dated Thursday, addressed to victims who have opened a file and whose AFP had a copy.

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According to her, "to date, 138 situations have been taken into account (began to be assessed by its teams, editor's note) (...). It is still too few, far too few compared to the hundreds who are waiting (more of 700)", adds the person in charge of this body intended for the victims of priests or lay people in various places of the Church (excluding congregations).

Reparations paid 

"Some and some (victims, editor's note) have expressed their dissatisfaction with the wait imposed and I fully understand that," she acknowledges, adding: "It takes time to do what we do well and it will take more to absorb situations.

On June 1, she had specified that the Inirr would have ruled on 10 cases at the end of the first half.

On July 10, the Fund for the relief and fight against abuse of minors in the Catholic Church (Selam), the structure that pays financial reparations once the decisions of the Inirr have been rendered, announced that it had paid six financial reparations, without specifying the amounts.

In her letter to the victims, Marie Derain also indicates that a secretary general - Florence Gavirey - is joining her team and that recruitments are "in progress" to expand the latter.

"Total operational opacity" 

In a response to Marie Derain, transmitted to AFP, François Devaux, co-founder of the association of victims of Lyon La parole liberated (now dissolved) regretted the "slowness of the process".

He also denounced "the scale method" used to assess the amount of financial reparations as well as the "total opacity of operation" of the instance.

"You apply a process of reparation to victims, whose dignity has been tarnished for a long time, without even having questioned the common sense of your protocol", he writes.

The Inirr, created by the episcopate in November 2021, offers reparations, which, when they include a financial component, are assessed on the basis of "three scales of gravity" and can go up to 60,000 euros.