A report released Tuesday regarding child sex abuse within France’s Catholic Church revealed there have been about 330,000 victims and about 3,000 perpetrators in the last 70 years.
About 2/3 of the child sex abuse perpetrators were priests, with the rest being others involved in the church. According to the report, about 80 percent of the victims were children at the time of the abuse.
The video above shows Conference of Bishops of France President Eric de Moulins-Beaufort respond to the child sex abuse report. It was issued by the Independent Commission on Sex Abuses in the Church (CIASE).
The head of the commission said 22 alleged crimes that can still be pursued have been forwarded to prosecutors. In addition, more than 40 cases that are too old to be prosecuted but involve alleged perpetrators who are still alive have been forwarded to church officials.
“There were faults, civil and criminal faults of course from the perpetrators of the abuses, sometimes also from Church officials who didn’t denounce or even sometimes exposed some children to risks knowingly by putting them in contact with predators,” CIASE President Marc Suavé said Tuesday. “But there’s mainly been some negligence, failures, silence, institutional cover up in a systemic manner.”
The commission issued 45 recommendations about how to prevent child sex abuse. They include training priests and other clerics, revising the legal code the Vatican uses to govern the church, and fostering policies to recognize and compensate victims.
The head of the French bishops’ conference asked for forgiveness from the child sex abuse victims. The bishops are meeting Tuesday to discuss next steps.
“Your report is tough, it is harsh,” de Moulins-Beaufort said. “The scale of the sexual abuse and violence in the society and in the Church you describe is astounding.”
He went on to say there will be compensation for some of the child sex abuse victims.
“We have still decided to give money to the people, victims, because money is a way to express the seriousness of the grief they received, of their condition and to express the fact that we are aware that it is because of the church or in the church that they were victims,” de Moulins-Beaufort said.
