And what if this was just the beginning? The evidence against Abbé Pierre, an emblematic figure in the fight against poor housing and homelessness, is multiplying. On Friday, September 6, 17 new testimonies from women were shared by the specialized firm Egaé. They accuse the man of faith of sexual violence. Acts that were allegedly committed between the 1950s and the 2000s.
This Monday, September 9, it was the investigation unit of Radio France that revealed new damning documents. Handwritten letters that Abbé Pierre addressed in particular to Suther Marshall, an American student who co-organized the religious man’s trip to the United States in 1955.
“I saw so many things during the trip”
According to Radio France, several women complained about Abbé Pierre’s behavior in New York, Chicago and Washington during this trip. A stay cut short at the request of a French Catholic theologian, Jacques Maritain, after these complaints, for fear of a scandal.
The American student, Suther Marshall, then wrote a handwritten letter to a close friend of the priest a few months after the events.
“I saw so many things during the trip, ways of acting of the Father as an individual. I think, for example, of Chicago, when it had been explicitly decided that the condition of continuing the trip was that the father should never be alone,” wrote the student in this letter broadcast by the investigation unit of Radio France.
Abbé Pierre had then sent a letter, dated the end of 1955, to the student. “You promised not to get involved in this multitude of things where you can only accumulate devastation, chaos and infection,” he had written. “Know that not a single repeat will go unanswered, and if necessary [mes réponses seront] brutal, surgical.”
According to the investigation unit of Radio France, similar events could have taken place in Canada in 1959. In a letter addressed to the Reverend Roy, a Quebec cardinal whom he suspected of being aware of his actions, Abbé Pierre had refuted the accusations.
“All these accusations are false,” he asserted. “Nothing of this kind of misery ever existed, never existed anywhere, none of these miserable police acts of which you have spoken. If more than my word is required, I can give you an oath to that.”
In this letter, the emblematic figure in the fight against poor housing had also threatened to take legal action against “those who make these comments”.
Permanent closure of a place of memory
Abbé Pierre has been the target of a series of accusations of sexual violence since last July. Seven women had accused the man of inappropriate gestures between 1970 and 2005 in a report made public by Emmaüs and the Abbé Pierre Foundation on July 17.
Seven weeks after the first revelations, the specialist firm Egaé published, this Friday, September 6, the report in which appears 17 new testimonies accusing Abbé Pierre of sexual violence. These are said to have been committed between the 1950s and the 2000s.
“To date, it is possible to identify at least 17 additional people who suffered violence at the hands of” the priest who died in 2007, we can read in this report, which notably reports facts that could be similar to rape.
In total, the Egaé group, tasked on July 17 by Emmaüs and the Abbé Pierre Foundation with collecting potential new testimonies, indicated that it had received around fifty emails and twenty telephone messages as of September 2.
Following the publication of the report, the Abbé Pierre Foundation announced in a press release that it had “decided to change its name and had initiated the necessary steps to this end”, while reaffirming its “total support” for the victims.
In the same press release, the Emmaüs movement announced the definitive closure of the place of remembrance dedicated to Abbé Pierre, in Esteville (Seine-Maritime), the village where he is buried.
- BFMTV.com
