Home » News » Frochaux affair: The bishopric delves into its past with a “presumption of mistrust” – Vaud & Régions

Frochaux affair: The bishopric delves into its past with a “presumption of mistrust” – Vaud & Régions

“As long as we seek to protect our institution first, we are missing our duty.” This sentence by Bishop Morerod sets the tone for the evening which took place Wednesday evening in Lausanne. The bishop, invited to a round table by the Sapec group (Association to support people abused in a relationship of religious authority), did not parade, while his diocese of Lausanne, Geneva and Friborg (LGF) a storm: the revelation of alleged sexual abuse by the cathedral priest, Paul Frochaux – currently suspended – on a young man aged 17 at the time of the events (therefore minor in the eyes of canon law). This scandal was present both implicitly and explicitly in the questions of the assembly, where journalists had slipped.

Bishop Morerod said to himself at a turning point: “We must go from a presupposition of trust to a presupposition of distrust.” How, “flicking the bishopric?” asked a journalist from “La Liberté”. In response, the bishop said: “Since the beginning of this month, an ex-police officer has been systematically studying all the files. Until now, if we didn’t hear anything, we weren’t looking. ” And Mgr Morerod underlines the difficulty of decrypting certain documents: “The tendency of these archives is that the vocabulary is not very explicit.” An obvious problem in the case of the minutes, more than the concise one, of the confrontation which had taken place in 2001 between Father Frochaux and the young man who accused him. The testimony of the latter, last week in the German-speaking media, is however explicit: “He took advantage of my privacy and my confidence. I suffered a lot from what happened. A mixture of shame and a feeling of being raped. ” The abbot would have seized his penis. He would also have brought his into the young man’s mouth.

In terms of the archives, enormous work seems to have to be carried out: “When I arrived in 2011, there was no longer an archivist. When we wanted to investigate the Marini Institute (note: ex-Catholic institution for which Bishop Morerod commissioned an investigation which identified 11 abusers and 21 child victims between 1929 and 1955), we found the documents in the cellar ! The previous archivist kept everything, even SBB advertisements. Everything was swelling and out of place. We ended up finding one person’s file in someone else’s. ” An affirmation confirmed by Jacques Nuoffer, president of the Sapec group: “Mgr Genoud (note: the bishop who preceded Mgr Morerod) had refused to give me the file concerning the priest who had abused me, arguing that it was secret. Bishop Morerod accepted, even if it took him a year to get his hands on it. In a chain of documents, sometimes double or triple photocopied, I found a letter from the former bishop which was very useful in making me recognize that there had been problems with this priest. “

Blindness of loved ones

This problem of access to documents is put forward by Bishop Morerod to explain his ignorance of the 2001 confrontation between Father Frochaux and the young alleged victim. The SOS Prevention Commission (set up in 2008 to investigate sexual abuse committed in the diocese) had handed over, when it was dissolved in 2012, all the cases dealt with in the bishopric. Why did Bishop Morerod not take cognizance of the file on Father Frochaux? “I received two federal binders that I read. Cases of which many of the authors had already died. Now, former members of SOS Prévention tell me that there was an envelope in the name of Father Frochaux, whose contents they ignore, but that I never found. I strongly question the non-transmission of information. “

The journalist of “Tages-Anzeiger” who revealed the affair insisted: “Why have you never noticed the tendency of Father Frochaux (visible even in the photos) to want to be close to young people?” “What can I tell you?” I didn’t know him like that! Until recently, I trusted him completely. ” Jacques Nuoffer defended the bishop: “My parents welcomed a priest for a month or two with us, where he abused me. I struggled before their eyes, I didn’t know how to do it. Yet they saw nothing. “

The diocese said on Sunday that “Bishop Morerod vigorously denies having concealed facts” in connection with the Frochaux affair. As a token of his good faith, the bishop hammered on Wednesday his line of conduct since taking office: “In 2012, I said that I will always inform the police and I have done so on several occasions, without warn data subjects so as not to give them the opportunity to destroy evidence. I’m a little afraid that it will lead to some things being hidden from me. This can increase the omerta. But the fundamental reason for taking action is the priority of not having new victims. ”

Created: 13.02.2020, 22h33

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.