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3 years after landmark French abuse report, experts still work with survivors, urge vigilance
PARIS (OSV News) — Three years after a landmark French clerical sexual abuse report was published, a member of the commission that released it told OSV News the testimonies he heard had a great impact on him and that he remains in touch with those affected, helping them move forward.
Stéphane de Navacelle, 44, a lawyer and member of the New York and Paris bars, was appointed member of the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church, known as CIASE for its French acronym, in 2019. The commission was set up by the French bishops’ conference and the Conference of Religious of France. Chaired by senior civil servant Jean-Marc Sauvé, CIASE submitted its conclusions in Paris on Oct. 5, 2021, after an almost three-year investigation.
The report estimated that 330,000 children in France had been sexually abused since 1950 and provided the country’s first accounting of the crisis. According to Sauvé, Catholic authorities covered up the abuse for decades in a “systemic manner” in France.
Navacelle interviewed some 40 victims for CIASE and was deeply moved by the testimonies he heard from adults talking about their destroyed childhoods. “Child abuse is a violation of the commandment ‘You shall not kill,'” he told OSV News. “The victims we have heard are dead children in the bodies of living adults.”
Three years on, his mission is not completed, Navacelle said. He treats his duties as ongoing to help the church in the long run and still supports victims within the Recognition and Reparation Commission, which was set up in November 2021 by the church, following CIASE’s report.
It accompanies hundreds of religious men and women who have suffered abuse within religious institutes. “We help them to verbalize what they have experienced, to address their hierarchy, to take any steps likely to help them move forward,” Navacelle explained.
“Furthermore, their testimonies are invaluable in helping to put measures in place to ensure this does not happen again,” he added.
Navacelle focuses especially on the cases of the community of the Brothers of St. John. Founded in 1975, it quickly flourished in France in the 1980s and 1990s. By the 2000s, there were over 500 brothers, many of them priests, in addition to religious sisters.
But in 2013, revelations about the abusive behavior of its founder, French Dominican Father Marie-Dominique Philippe, who died in 2006, stunned the French Catholic world.
According to a 2023 report issued by Brothers of St. John, Father Philippe in 40 years had set up a system of widespread domination that had led to sectarian aberrations and a considerable number of sexual abuses. Many members had inflicted on others the same abuses they themselves had suffered. The 800-page report published by the community mentioned 72 abusers who had acted between 1975 and 2022, which constitutes over 8% of the brothers in the community.
https://www.osvnews.com/2024/10/09/3-years-after-landmark-french-abuse-report-experts-still-work-with-survivors-urge-vigilance/
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