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Abbé Pierre accused of sexual violence: “It’s a shock,” says Christophe Robert, general delegate of the Abbé-Pierre Foundation
Several women have testified before a firm of experts to denounce sexual assaults and sexual harassment targeting Abbé Pierre.
(France 2)
Several women have testified before a firm of experts to denounce sexual assaults and sexual harassment targeting Abbé Pierre.
Following the revelation of testimonies reporting acts of sexual assault committed by Abbé Pierre against several women, it is the “shock”. “It was a terrible shock. We said to ourselves ‘but it’s not possible’. It was an explosion, but we said to ourselves we have to shed light on it if there were other people to support and to give voice so that we can support them with all our strength, and so that they can be heard. I didn’t meet them. It was the firm of experts specializing in sexual violence who met them anonymously.”explains Christophe Robert, general delegate of the Abbé-Pierre Foundation.
An iconic figure in the fight against exclusion, Abbé Pierre, who died in 2007, is accused by several women of sexual assaults committed between the end of the 1970s and 2005. “What the firm that did this work of listening to the victims tells us is that when we have such a time span, from the end of the 1970s to 2005, that means that there are probably others. The proportions are difficult to evaluate.”adds the general delegate of the Abbé-Pierre Foundation.
