The number of victims of sexual abuse among children and adolescents in the French Catholic Church since the 1950s has reached about 216,000, the commission of inquiry found.
If the estimates include victims in other church-run institutions, the total could be 330,000, Jean-Marc Soto said in Paris on Tuesday. He chairs an independent commission that investigates allegations of sexual abuse in the church (CIASE).
80% of the victims are boys between the ages of ten and 13, and 20% are girls in different age groups.
Almost one in three cases has been raped.
“The numbers are alarming and cannot be left without consequences,” Soto said.
In addition to the trauma of the use itself, the victims had to live in isolation, often with shame and guilt, he said.
Many still suffer the consequences of the abuse.
Following a decline in the number of cases of sexual exploitation in the post-war decades, the number has recently remained stable.
“We should not assume that the problem is behind us, it still exists,” Soto said.
In a presentation of the long-awaited report, the leader of the victims’ organization La Parole Liberee, François Devo, said that the church would “pay for all these crimes”.
They will be billions of dollars, he said.
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