Seven women testify to Abbé Pierre’s inappropriate actions

In a communiqué published this Wednesday, July 17, 2024, the Emmaüs Movement makes public “facts which may be similar to sexual assaults or sexual harassment, committed by Abbé Pierre, between the end of the 1970s and 2005.”

Seven women have testified to inappropriate gestures, some described as sexual assaults, committed once morest them by the founder of the Emmaüs movement, according to the newspaper La Croix, which revealed these testimonies. Abbé Pierre, who died in 2007, was for a long time one of the French people’s favorite personalities. These revelations have created a media shock and shaken up the structures in which Abbé Pierre occupies a major place: Emmaüs International, Emmaüs France and the Abbé Pierre Foundation.

A year ago, the Emmaüs Movement commissioned a firm specializing in violence prevention, the Egaé group, to conduct a listening and analysis exercise following a complaint received in June 2023. A woman reported serious acts committed by Abbé Pierre in the late 1970s, when she was still a minor. She is the daughter of a couple close to Abbé Pierre. The daily The crosswho was able to consult the investigation report, mentions repeated touching aimed at the young woman’s chest and other inappropriate behavior a few years later. Following this first testimony, listening to Emmaüs volunteers and employees made it possible to bring up six other testimonies from alleged victims. Emmaüs International, which commissioned the Egaé group’s investigation, is setting up a listening line to collect other possible testimonies from victims or witnesses.

“Our organizations salute the courage of the people who have testified and, through their words, have allowed these realities to be brought to light. We believe them, we know that these intolerable acts have left their mark and we stand by their side.” declares the Emmaus Movement, which intends to combat all forms of violence and denounce “unacceptable acts committed by a person who played a major role in its history“.

Abbé Pierre, recalls La Croix, had confided at the end of his life that he had broken his vow of chastity. “I have experienced sexual desire and its very rare satisfaction”he confided in a book of interviews published in 2005 by Frédéric Lenoir. These statements had at the time caused a lot of noise and, for some, already tarnished the image of “holiness” associated with the man of the Church and his fights on behalf of the poorest.

M.V.L.