“The scandal is that for 35 years he was able to commit these misdeeds with complete impunity,” denounces Sister Véronique Margron.

Several women have testified before a firm of experts, mandated by the Abbé Pierre Foundation, to denounce sexual assaults and sexual harassment targeting the man of the Church who died in 2007. The events took place between the 1970s and 2005.

“The scandal is that for 35 years he was able to commit these crimes with complete impunity.”denounced this Thursday on franceinfo Sister Véronique Margron, president of the Conference of Religious Men and Women of France (Corref), sponsor with the episcopate of the Sauvé report and who collected the first testimony of a woman accusing Abbé Pierre of sexual assault. The Sauvé report is the result of the work of the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church made public in 2021. “This is the scandal within the scandal. The scandal is that this man turns out to have been a sexual aggressor. The scandal is that for 35 years, he was able to commit these crimes with complete impunity.”she denounced. “There are bound to be people around him, close to him, who saw that things were happening that were at least abnormal, even if they didn’t know how to describe them.”she added.

franceinfo: You alerted Emmaüs after collecting a woman’s testimony. Didn’t you hesitate?

Veronique Margron: I alerted Emmaus at the request of this lady because it was her wish that Emmaus be informed, and it was her wish, if this were possible through the recognition of Emmaus, that an independent investigation could be conducted. We must first and foremost salute the very, very great courage of this person.

“He had to overcome a kind of Himalayan figure, the figure of Abbé Pierre, and also, in a much more insidious way, the feeling of shame and guilt that the victims carry in place of their aggressor.”

Véronique Margron, president of the Conference of Religious Men and Women of France (Corref)

on franceinfo

Why did this woman, who was a minor at the time of the events, confide in you?

I don’t know. I think she came to me because it was well after the publication of the report of the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church. On that occasion, thanks to the work of journalists, the publicity around this report was very strong. Suddenly, she read or heard me and perhaps, she said to herself that someone was finally going to believe her and take her word seriously.

Did you take it seriously right away?

Of course, I had no reason, absolutely none, to doubt, to minimize what she was telling me. A victim’s story is so singular, so carnal, so hard. Each word comes from so far away that one can only believe her.

What words did she use?

I can simply tell you that her words came from her guts, from the depths of her being, to describe as precisely as possible what she had suffered, the circumstances, the personal events that were hers at that time, as I hear from so many victims. Even though, obviously, we cannot do a counter-investigation, question Abbé Pierre, there is no reason to doubt these words.

These are very often facts that have been known for a long time in many similar cases. Are attempts still being made to hide them?

This is the scandal within the scandal. The scandal is that this man turns out to have been a sexual aggressor. And the scandal is that for 35 years, he was able to commit these misdeeds with complete impunity. The Emmaüs movement has done work that must really be commended for the independence of the Commission, for setting up a call for testimonies, for supporting victims. But if I look out the window, namely in the Church, we are in this situation where we see and we do not want to see, we see and we do not believe what we see. And for Abbé Pierre, there are necessarily people who, around him, among his close friends, saw that things were happening that were at least abnormal, even if they did not know how to qualify them.

Does this continue despite the Sauvé report, despite these revelations today?

We can fear of course that it will continue, that it will be less strong, I hope with all my strength and with all my soul, but that it will continue, that there will always be this kind of veil. It can be before our eyes, but no, we don’t believe it especially when it concerns famous people.