Two years after the Sauvé commission’s shocking report on child abuse in the Catholic Church since 1950, a little more than 2,000 victims contacted the two reparation commissions, we learned from these bodies on Wednesday.
The Recognition and Reparation Commission (CRR), which supports victims of sexual violence in Catholic congregations, was contacted by 782 people in total as of October 1: 178 in 2023, after 604 in 2022, its delegate told AFP General Anne de Richecour. At the end of support of around six months, 299 recommendations paving the way for financial compensation were issued, for an average amount of 36,200 euros.
The other commission created after the Sauvé report, the Independent National Recognition and Reparation Authority (Inirr), claimed to have received 1,285 requests as of October 1. They come from 67% men and their average age is 63 years, the body said. A total of 421 decisions were rendered “including 408 with a financial component”. Here too the average amount of repairs reached 36,000 euros.
After the initial influx of requests “we are now supporting more people than there are people waiting”, told AFP the president of Inirr, Marie Derain de Vaucresson, according to whom one one of the big challenges of the coming months will be to “ensure that all those who want to take part in a repair process know about our existence”. Inirr is aimed at victims of priests or lay people in dioceses, establishments or Catholic youth movements.
Nearly 330,000 people attacked over seventy years
On October 5, 2021, the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (Ciase) chaired by Jean-Marc Sauvé estimated that over the past seventy years, around 330,000 people had been assaulted within the Church when they were minors. .
But the victims’ collective Parler et Revivre deplored on Wednesday that “almost all victims (99.5%) remain away” from these reparation measures, in particular due to a “glaring lack of information” or “confidence”. “.
The association therefore recommends in a press release “a strong and targeted communication campaign on the existence of the Inirr and CRR commissions” and “that these commissions extend their activity beyond their first three-year mandate, after 2024.”