The Sauvé commission had collected three testimonies on Abbé Pierre

The Sauvé commission on sexual violence in the Catholic Church had already collected three testimonies on sexual assaults by Abbé Pierre, we learned on Saturday July 20 in a column published in The world. During the investigation (2019-2021) of the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE), “We have information establishing that Henri Grouès – Abbé Pierre – had committed acts violating common civility and morality, penal legislation and canonical precepts”write four of its former members, Philippe Portier (political scientist), Paul Airau (historian), Thomas Boullu (legal historian) and Anne Lancien (political scientist), in the newspaper. “Among the approximately 1,200 testimonies processed by our team, three implicated Abbé Pierre”they explain.

One of these testimonies “very likely corresponds to testimony B of the Emmaüs report” published on Wednesday, which cited seven testimonies in total, and concerns acts committed at the beginning of the 1980s in Namur (Belgium), the researchers explain. In this testimony, the priest had “grabbed a breast” And “kissed the mouth with full tongue” of the victim, before fleeing. Among the three testimonies collected by the Ciase is also that of a woman who received material assistance in the years 1989-1990 by Abbé Pierre, then “used”: “sexual relations, masturbation in front of her, fellatio, flagellation, proposition of threesome with another woman”according to the tribune of the World.

For the four researchers, the work of Ciase and the Emmaüs report show that “Abbé Pierre’s sexual compulsion which leads to repeated aggression seems indubitable”. In a general way, “The case of Abbé Pierre is fairly ordinary from a historical point of view. However, it has the advantage of summarizing many of the characteristics of sexual assault by Catholic clerics since the 1950s.”they believe.