TESTIMONY. Abbé Pierre “was accustomed to this,” says a nurse, victim of sexual assault by the priest.

France Inter has collected a new testimony which comes three days after the report accusing the cleric of sexual assaults on several women between the end of the 1970s and 2005.

“He was accustomed to the fact”a nurse testified on France Inter on Saturday, July 19, accusing Abbé Pierre of sexual assault. This new testimony comes three days after the report by Emmaüs France, Emmaüs International and the Abbé-Pierre Foundation, accusing the religious of sexual assault on several women, acts committed, according to the report, between the end of the 1970s and 2005.

These women, who worked in Abbé Pierre’s close circle, particularly at Emmaüs International, describe behaviour, inappropriate comments with sexual connotations and touching on the part of the man who was for a long time the favourite personality of the French.

In 2006, the nurse worked in a military hospital in the Paris region. It was in her department that Abbé Pierre, 93, was treated. She revealed that it was while accompanying the religious man to his toilet that she was attacked. “He stood up, he walked. And he grabbed both my breasts. I slapped himsays this forty-year-old. He told me he was old, he was tired, he needed to hold on.”

Reporting the facts to her manager and colleagues, the nurse notes that Father Pierre “was accustomed to the fact”. But she doesn’t let anything out. “The restraint comes from the fact that I am a caregiver. I was in the military and I don’t have to make these things public.” She assures that the fact of not having said anything “was due to this fact”but not “to his aura”. “The aura was gone.”

By slapping the religious man, she said to herself that she had “defended” and that she had done what she had to do. “Actually, I realize that it’s not fixed. There’s something in me that’s suffering from this.”

Eighteen years after this attack, the nurse confided to France Inter that it had shaken her Catholic faith. But she said she was especially relieved that the actions of Abbé Pierre had finally been revealed. She did not “don’t question” THE “beautiful and great things” that he did. But she refuses to do so “a saint”.

“It would be unfair and dishonest to just present him as a great man and praise him.”

Nurse accuses Abbé Pierre of sexual assault

to France Inter

Contacted by the commission of inquiry, this mother is still giving herself time to think about her response: “I owe it to my daughters and to the victims who spoke out. I can’t just sit back and stay silent.”