The Sauvé Commission on Child Sexual Abuse in the Church will extend its call for testimony by 5 months.
The Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church, created in 2018 by the Catholic Episcopate to investigate pedocrime committed by the clergy since the 1950s had launched in June 2019 a call for testimonies from victims, via a telephone platform , which was originally scheduled to expire on June 2. “We will extend it until October 31,” said its president, Jean-Marc Sauvé.
Several activities of his commission such as the hearings of victims in the regions have been suspended due to the health crisis and the confinement. They will resume gradually, as will the public meetings that could not be held in Lyon, Dijon, Aix-en-Provence, Rouen and Bastia (the latter will be digital). These activities and trips generating call flows to the platform, “it is necessary that it is always able to receive phone calls,” said Mr. Sauvé.
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In numbers
According to figures as of January 31, Ciase had received 4,500 calls. The majority of the victims were men (62.7%), currently aged, for 80% of them, over 50 years old. The victims were elderly in 32% cases from 6 to 10 years old, and in 35.3% cases from 11 to 15 years old. The facts were committed, for 59% cases, between 1950 and 1970. For a third, in schools (boarding schools), then in catechism or in chaplaincies (20%). The authors are men in 98% cases.
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A work on the perpetrators of sexual abuse
In addition, “the multiple effects of this crisis call into question the completion schedule for works”, initially planned for the first half of 2021. “Our report will be delivered a little later than expected, in late September or early October 2021”, a he clarified. “We have the firm intention of not drifting any more,” he said.
Finally, “we are going to start work on the perpetrators of sexual abuse in the church”, he said: “the trajectory that may have been theirs, their entry into the church, whether it be a congregation religious or diocesan clergy, their formation, what happened and the way in which they lived their own relationship with the Church, sometimes their exclusion ”.
“It is not possible to close our work without having started a reflection on what led, facilitated, or not, sexual abuse, seen from the side of the perpetrators,” he said, explaining being in “building up a sample of authors”.
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