The global tsunami of pedophilia in the Catholic Church swept France on October 5, 2021. That day the devastating report was made public, estimating at least 330,000 victims of sexual abuse since 1950. It was a shock. One thing is the centuries-old reputation for permissiveness in customs and quite another to verify the magnitude of the criminal behavior of those who were supposed to set a moral example.
Two independent national “recognition and reparation” bodies have since received more than 2,000 claims, of which around 700 have concluded with a recommendation for the payment of compensation. The average is around 36,000 euros. The maximum amount that can be received is 60,000 euros.
90% of those who have filed a claim are over 50 years old. Almost 70% are men and in half of the cases the sexual assaults occurred when they were under 12 years old. The events occurred, in 60% of cases, in school establishments. When it comes to abuse of adults, the gender proportion is reversed: 80% of victims were women and 20% men.
The flow of lawsuits was very strong after the report was published, but then the pace slowed considerably. The vast majority of victims still alive have preferred silence or have not even found out that it is possible to complain. The association Parler et Revivre (speak and revive) has regretted that 99.5% of potential beneficiaries of reparation have not taken the step to obtain it, due to a lack of information or confidence in the procedure. They have also asked that the two bodies in charge extend their work beyond their initial three-year mandate, which ends in 2024.
The commission that prepared the 2021 report was chaired by Jean-Marc Sauvé, former number two of the Council of State and practicing Catholic. The team with which he worked, of around twenty people - including sociologists, anthropologists, historians, doctors and theologians - studied the issue for two and a half years. This commission made 3,600 telephone calls with victims and received 2,800 emails. Some 250 victims were interviewed in greater depth. While preparing the report, Sauvé was “stunned” by the difficulty of the Catholic hierarchy in speaking clearly about the facts, preferring euphemisms and indirect language. That was one of the basic reasons that explain “the systemic institutional coverage” of the abuses.
In a recent interview, Sauvé was generally satisfied with the Church's quick response to the payment of compensation. Instead, he lamented the slowness in the application of effective prevention measures and the essential reforms to prevent sexual abuse in the future, including a more determined opening of the institution to lay people and women.
The French Catholic Church immediately created a fund of 20 million euros to cover compensation, a very modest amount, as it is estimated that it represents just 0.24% of its total assets – worth 8.2 billion euros. –, including their real estate properties. Some dioceses, such as that of Bayonne, decided to sell real estate and others, such as that of Strasbourg, their stock portfolio. However, as detractors denounce, the financial effort of the French Church to repair the damage caused is much less than that undertaken by countries such as the United States, Australia or Holland.
