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It’s a figure that has gone largely unnoticed.
In the flood of information and disturbing statistics published earlier this month by France’s Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE), too little attention has been paid to an important detail in the commission’s report – an estimated 115,000 minors and vulnerable adults were sexually abused by laypeople in a church setting over the past 70 years.
They are a significant portion of the 330,000 victims abused (216,000 others by priests) between 1950-2020.
Abuse by laypeople is something CIASE has not particularly dealt with, except for a few elements that once again underline the gravity of the situation.
The report already makes it possible to define these profiles of lay abusers who, in fact, cannot claim the status of priest or religious, but exercise ecclesial missions.
They are catechists and teachers in Catholic schools. They are also leaders of chaplaincies, choirs, youth movements or scout troops and so forth.
“From these data, the first result shows that, contrary to popular belief, sexual violence in the Church is not the prerogative of only clerics, men and women religious, but lay people are, for their part, at the origin of 34.6% of assaults, or more than a third,” notes the CIASE report, also known as the Sauvé Report.
“As soon as adults are in contact with minors, there is a risk, in the Catholic Church as elsewhere, of abuse of power, authority or trust leading to sexual assault,” the report insists.
“It is also likely that, over time, especially with the reduction in the number of clerics and religious and the rise in responsibility for the laity, the proportion of victims of lay people in the Catholic Church will increase,” it notes.
Little documentation of abuse by lay people
Since the statistical study did not include laity, there is little evidence to establish data over time.
Moreover, the strength of the Sauvé Report lies in the emphasis on the testimony of victims.
However, “only” 75 of the more than 2,000 testimonies revealed abuse committed by lay people in the church setting.
Finally, the socio-historical investigation focused on diocesan archives, which contain few documents on abuse committed by laypeople.
La Croix was confronted with this lack of information when it contacted Catholic youth centres.
While the Sauvé Report notes that 30% of abuse in the Church occurred in the context of schools or boarding schools, the general secretariat of Catholic education admits that it cannot distinguish between those committed by priests, teachers or chaplains, and those committed by laypeople.
A strong prevalence from the 1940s to 1960s
It is also known that the highest incidence of sexual violence by priests against minors in Catholic education occurred between 1940 and 1960.
The report goes on to note “a decrease in the number of sexual assaults by clergy and religious in Catholic education, due to the rapid withdrawal of clergy from these institutions”.
For several years, the Sauvé Report stresses:
“there has been a general phenomenon of professionalization for professions related to childhood: catechism is now provided by laypeople (essentially women); teaching under contract in Catholic schools is controlled by the national education system; the supervision of group camps for minors (summer camps, scouting, leisure centres without accommodation) is also controlled by the State and has become professionalized via a diploma requiring training, even if it remains partly voluntary”.
There are many aspects that allow for better prevention of abuse of any kind.
“In this figure of 115,000, we feel potentially involved”
One of CIASE’s recommendations is that laypeople involved in Church work be given better training. It also insists on the obligation to “systematically check the criminal background of any person that the Church appoints or assigns in a habitual way with minors or vulnerable people”.
During a hearing in the French senate on March 26, 2019, the leaders of the main scouting movements explained that this verification takes place in a systematic way via a teleprocedure for welcoming minors.
Nevertheless, “in this figure of 115,000, we feel potentially involved,” acknowledged Armelle Toulemonde, head of the Aux Aguets commission for the Unitary Scouts of France (SUF), which intends to fight against sexual abuse within its ranks.
But, she said she is aware of only a very small number of abuse cases.
“I am frightened about the number of people who do not speak out,” she admitted.
“I know of five cases, two of which were in the 1990s,” Toulemonde said.
“Yet when we created Aux Aguets, we wanted to give victims a voice. We put out a call for witnesses in the press, but we got no response,” she noted.
“Before the CIASE report came out, we wrote to the group leaders to invite them, if they ever received any reports, to refer people to our commission,” the scouting official said.
Olivier Savignac, who was abused by a priest during his time as a scout, said it is not surprising that victims do not turn first to the movement in which they were abused.
“The first instinct is to seek help outside,” said Savignac, who is now involved in the victims’ group “Parler et Revivre”.
“In a movement, everyone knows each other, and there may be fear of a conflict of loyalty between the person receiving the confidence and the abuser,” he said.
Structures made aware of this evil that is eating away at society as a whole
This violence is not, however, a blind spot, as the various educational and support structures for young people have, for the most part, been made aware of this evil that is eating away at society as a whole.
Agnès Cerbelaud-Salagnac, spokesperson for the Scouts and Guides of France, said her organization receives “two to three calls a year” from people who wish to report old incidents.
“We take the time to listen to the person and we put him or her in contact with our legal service to see what can be done, if he or she can lodge a complaint,” she said.
“When a case breaks out, it gets publicized so that other potential victims can bring attention to their situation,” Cerbelaud-Salagnac pointed out.
But Savignac deplored the “protective reflex on the part of the institutions, which do not want to bring the dead bodies out of the closet, and prefer to remain within their own walls”.
Nevertheless, he acknowledged that “these acts are today more rare, since safeguards have been put in place and people speak about it more freely”.
In fact, when a case is brought to court, the various scouting movements now take action alongside the victim.
- Christophe Henning and Clémence Houdaille write for La Croix in France.
- First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.
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