“To think that we missed that and that we didn’t see it, well that’s what’s most terrible,” regrets the 40-year-old actor, after the numerous revelations of accusations of sexual assault against the priest who died in 2007.
«How could this guy who could do such extraordinary things behave so badly?.” Benjamin Lavernhe, who played the priest in the biopic Abbé Pierre, a life of struggle released in 2023, spoke for the first time on Sunday November 10 on France 2, concerning the twenty accusations of sexual assault targeting the man of the Church.
«It's terrible. I think of the victims, there are 25 testimonies, but it's terrible», he reveals in the show Nice gesture, broadcast on France 2. Obviously, we feel a great betrayal, a great sadness. From astonishment. I'm looking for words, but it's hard to find them. Fear, because somewhere, he was a friend. I feel like I knew him a little. Not so good “, he continues, even if the two have never met. “How could this guy who did so many extraordinary things behave so badly? And beyond! The duality of the human being, the ambivalence, it's always a shock», Regrets Benjamin Lavernhe.
«We are devastated»
Directed by Frédéric Tellier (Goliath, Save or Perish), Abbé Pierre: A life of struggle, presented out of competition at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, traces the many struggles of the founding priest of Emmaüs. “Abbé Pierre had an incredible life and was a real rock star. Tell about this figure who crossed the 20th centurye century, it's telling our story”, Wassim Béji said at the time. But the film team is now “collapsed», according to the words of Benjamin Lavernhe, since the accusations of sexual assault targeting the man of the Church who died in 2007, revealed in mid-July. Certain accusations relate in particular to acts which could be related to rape, or concern minors, committed between the 1950s and the 2000s. If his family claims not to have been aware of these accusations, some bishops have known for a long time. sixty years, reports Archbishop Éric de Moulins-Beaufort. “To think that we missed that and didn't see it, well that's what's the most terrible. It's going to take time to recover», Regrets the 40-year-old actor.
The film team had already expressed itself through a press release published on social networks in September. “These crimes, which shed a completely new light on the destiny of Abbé Pierre, were obviously unknown to us at the time we made this film, just as they were unknown to the French.», defended the people involved in the project.
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