LThe Emmaüs movement continues its heavy but valuable work of shedding light. While last July, the organization released a damning report evoking “serious acts” and sexual violence committed from the end of the 1970s to 2005 by the founder of Emmaüs, Abbé Pierre, a new report was revealed this Friday.
There are now nearly seventeen new testimonies reporting sexual violence committed by the priest between the early 1950s and the 2000s. These revelations are in addition to those made public in mid-July and which followed a report in June 2023, from the daughter of a couple close to Abbé Pierre. She had then asked to be received by officials from the Emmaüs association and had revealed that the cleric had carried out “serious acts” against her in the 1970s, when she was a minor.
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Abbé Pierre accused of sexual assault on seven women, including at least one minor
The report published this Friday was entrusted by the Emmaüs movement (Emmaüs International, Emmaüs France and the Abbé Pierre Foundation) to the specialist firm Egaé. According to the experts who entrusted the conclusions of their investigation to AFP, it is now possible to identify at least seventeen additional people who suffered violence at the hands of the priest who died in 2007, revelations that result from a call for testimonies opened on July 17, after the first wave of statements targeting the priest. These new testimonies report “unsolicited contact on the breasts”, “forced kisses”, “forced fellatio”, “repeated sexual contact on a vulnerable person”, “repeated acts of sexual penetration” and “sexual contact on a child”. Our colleagues from Monde detail that the youngest was only 8 or 9 years old at the time of the events and that she was accompanying her stepfather, himself a perpetrator of sexual violence during visits to Abbé Pierre: “He asked her the colour of her panties, touched her breasts, kissed her with his tongue”, we can read in the report, which specifies that the person who testified “provided coherent and precise elements on the place and context of these events”.
The Abbé Pierre Foundation changes its name
In total, the Egaé group, tasked on July 17 by Emmaüs and the Abbé Pierre Foundation with collecting potential new testimonies, indicates that it has received about fifty emails and twenty telephone messages as of September 2. The people who have testified are or have been Emmaüs volunteers, employees of places where Abbé Pierre stayed, members of families close to the priest or people met at public events.
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How will the Emmaüs movement cope with this new wave of testimonies implicating this figure in the fight against poverty and poor housing? Reaffirming their “total support” for the victims, the Abbé Pierre Foundation announced on Friday its decision to change its name and Emmaüs announced the permanent closure of the memorial site dedicated to Abbé Pierre in Esteville (Seine-Maritime), the village where he is buried.
