The Sauvé report published on Tuesday was able to estimate the number of victims of pedophile acts within the French Catholic Church since 1950. 216,000 in total. However, the survey produced by the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church (Ciase) could not determine the exact number of nuns victims of sexual assault. However, the latter shows how situations of isolation and control in communities can lead to abuses.
The President of the Commission, Jean-Marc Sauvé, in presenting his report, assured him: the subject of vulnerable adults attacked – mainly nuns – “has not been neglected at all. “The estimate carried out by Inserm (a survey on a sample of 28,000 people) could not quantify the number of victims -” Can a vulnerable person declare himself such? », Emphasizes Jean-Marc Sauvé. But looking at the content of the 45 recommendations, their problem was associated with that of minors.
“Infantilized by the rules of their community”
By major “vulnerable”, the Commission understood “any person being engaged in a sexual relation not freely consented within the framework of a relation of hierarchy, spiritual accompaniment or control. To better understand the sources of this violence, the research institute conducted detailed interviews with 12 assaulted nuns.
“As with the minors who have been assaulted, it is not just a few cases of” black sheep “, but something systemic”, affirms Julie Ancian, sociologist at Inserm, who carried out this work, reported in a hundred pages in the report. Particularly because the nuns have particularities. “They are first of all doubly exposed to violence, both as women and, in a certain way, as children because by their status, they are infantilized by the rules to which they must comply in their community”, affirms the researcher.
Priests who are difficult to denounce
They are also “extremely isolated; in general they have cut themselves off from their families and have no friends outside their community ”. Added to this is the fact that it is often “a priest or community leader who is the perpetrator – seen as a“ saint ”, with enormous influence over community members. It is extremely difficult to denounce it ”.
In certain cases, “there was no mechanism of surveillance, of control” and “of the men found themselves to be all-powerful”, recently affirmed Véronique Margron, the president of Corref (institutes and religious congregations). Another characteristic, according to Julie Ancian: these nuns “are watched a lot, some communities have operations that are sectarian drifts with techniques of psychological manipulation”.
Those who would like to leave “without resources”
Finally, a particularly important element: in these communities, these nuns “take the vow of poverty, so they get rid of everything they own. The day they are exposed to violence and want to leave their community, they are deprived of resources. It is extremely difficult for them to get out of this. If they manage to leave their community everything has to be done again; to take care of oneself, find accommodation, a job … “
An observation made by Caroline Pierrot, president of the collective Hope resilience and who testified before Ciase. Entering the community of the Beatitudes when she was 20, she said she was attacked by a priest. “When I entered religious life, I gave everything. When I left, I had nothing, I no longer even had social security, ”she testifies.
“A negation of vulnerable adults” by the Church
Beyond the Sauvé report, some nuns fear they will remain largely forgotten. “Considering the reactions of the bishops in the Church, for me, there is a kind of negation of vulnerable adults”, judges Caroline Pierrot, recounting “the great precariousness” in which some currently live.
“I fear that Church officials only consider adults with disabilities, for example, obscuring adults made vulnerable for other reasons such as serious events in their lives, or the material vulnerability of nuns”, emphasizes another adult woman assaulted, on condition of anonymity. France has 23,000 sisters and nuns.