“The injury will always be there but we can allow it” to victims of sexual violence in the Church “to reconnect with the future”, explained on franceinfo Antoine Garapon, essayist and magistrate. He is at the head of the Independent Commission for Recognition and Reparation, which pursues mediation between victims of sexual crimes and the Church, offers a scale of 5,000 euros and 60,000 euros.
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franceinfo: Is this an essential step after the Sauvé report?
Antoine Garapon: It’s the follow-up to the Sauvé report and it’s a significantly different job because there you have to take action, confront the direct victims. It is a job that had to start by building instruments that are shared by all. We contacted the lawyers responsible for settling the problem of the American scouts. They told us to always keep the victims on our side and communicate with them.
How was the contact with the victims?
There is no perfect answer and we relied on our experience, on themes that came up often. Many victims told us that they were afraid. We had to help them with this questionnaire, which sometimes goes into detail, and these details help them. They are not obliged to answer, but the questionnaire was very well received because it is a way of exteriorizing something that one carries within oneself.
Were you inspired by the work of French justice?
I am a magistrate, so my first instinct is to look at what justice is doing. It was the courts that invented this scale from 1 to 7 and we stuck to them. We raised the weakest floors. It was a very good starting point. Then there was the delicate question of the ceiling. We said to ourselves that we were going to take the maximum of what was decided in Europe, 50,000 euros in Germany, and we are going to put 10,000 euros more to make people accept what is a disappointment for some victims. Some arrive with the hope of being able to obtain a large sum and I think that it is not healthy to maintain them in this perspective.
Is this a compensation provided for by the Church in the process of the Sauvé report?
We talk about compensation because we know that compensation item by item, as judges do, is impossible. We wouldn’t make it. We cannot establish facts that happened 50-70 years ago in the privacy of a confessional or a boarding school dormitory. To benefit from these repairs, you must write to us. If we are not competent, we say so.
“We respond to everyone and we try not to leave anyone without a solution.”
Antoine Garapon, essayist and magistrateat franceinfo
What will be next?
Now that we have the instruments, we will try to have a steady pace because all the victims want to get it over with. A victim who has been locked in silence for 40 years, the day she speaks, she wants it to come right away, she wants to end it. That’s why we’re going to organize. The injury will still be there but we can allow them to reconnect with the future. At the level of the victims, we have people whose children have left, for whom retirement is approaching. Memories of childhood or adolescence come back. Young people remain silent for less time and speak more willingly.