Two and a half years of work, the report by the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church, Tuesday, October 5, reports 216,000 victims sexually assaulted by clergy while they were minor since 1950. It describes a “massive” and “systemic” phenomenon.
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More than the absolute, tragic but probably undervalued value is the comparison that is devastating. The report of the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church (CIASE), made public Tuesday, October 5, considers the number of victims, during their minority, of sexual violence by a priest, a deacon. or a religious, in the current population aged 18 and over, to 216,000 people.
The Commission chaired by Jean-Marc Sauvé, former Vice-President of the Council of State, sought where the Catholic Church was situated in this assessment relative to the other spheres of socialization. His answer is formal: “The Catholic Church is, apart from the family and friendly circles, the environment where the prevalence of sexual violence is the highest.” If we add the aggressions suffered from non-priests or Religious related to the Church (staff of schools, catechists, supervisors of youth movements …), we arrive at an estimate of 330,000 people victims.
Two and a half years of work, the report was given on Tuesday to its agents, the Conference of Bishops of France (CEF) and the Conference of the Religious and Religious of France (Corref). Under the pressure of the collectives of victims, the two organizations, representing one of the dioceses, the other the Congregations, had, in November 2018, resolved to create an independent body to take stock of what happened Since 1950, studying the reactions of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, evaluating the measures taken for twenty years to put an end to this phenomenon and make proposals to prevent repetition. For a few days, messages were broadcast by some bishops that the faithful that they had to expect particularly upsetting revelations.
Under the title “The sexual violence in the Catholic Church – France, 1950-2020”, the Commission, which could work unhindered, makes an inventory of “particularly dark”, summarizes Jean-Marc saved in his introduction. For the twenty-two members of CIASE, the most destabilizing figures arrived in the last phase of their mission. It is in the first half of this year that the general population survey conducted with 30,000 people made it possible to calculate the prevalence of sexual violence according to the different spheres of socialization.
According to this survey, carried out under the conduct of the sociologist Nathalie Bajos, director of research at the INSERM and the School of Higher studies in Social Sciences (EHESS) , sexual assault on minors by clerics and religious accounted for a little less than 4% of all the assaults of this type committee, which concerned a total of 5.5 million people aged 18 and over today (14.5% of women, 6.4% of men). The proportion rises to 6% if the aggression committed by laity related to the Church are included.
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