The Sauvé commission, responsible for investigating sexual abuse in the Church since the 1950s, resumed its tour of France of public meetings on Tuesday, with a meeting in Rouen, to continue to publicize its approach, said this body.
Read also: Abuse in the Church: the Sauvé commission lists 3,000 victims
The Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (Ciase), created in 2018 by the episcopate to shed light on the sexual abuse committed against minors since the 1950s in the Catholic Church, has also announced the opening next of an opinion survey of 30,000 people to take the measure of sexual violence against minors in the church, reported to the whole of French society.
After having set up a call for testimonies from victims, via a telephone platform, the Ciase started at the end of 2019 a tour of France in several large provincial towns, which had to be interrupted with the health crisis.
These public meetings, in which victims of pedophile crime have often participated, resume Tuesday in Rouen, before Lyon on September 22, Dijon on 29. Then it will be Aix-en-Provence on October 1 and finally Bastia on October 5.
Due to the circulation of the virus, the meetings will also be broadcast on the Ciase website and on social networks.
Read also: Sexual abuse in the Church: the Sauvé commission calls for testimony
In addition, Jean-Marc Sauvé, president of Ciase, announced to AFP that the Commission would launch at the beginning of October "
an opinion survey, on 30,000 people, to take the measure of sexual violence committed against minors or adults in the whole of French society: in worship, but also in the family, school, child protection, sport, youth movements
”.
“
This will allow us to have new data to quantify and understand sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in the more general context of sexual abuse in French society,
” he explained.
It should allow us to count and measure what the sexual abuse has been and to report the sexual abuse committed in the milieu of the Catholic Church in relation to the sexual abuses committed in the whole of French society ”.
This survey, carried out under the scientific direction of Inserm, should "last a month"
and will make it possible to have
"the first upsurges in November", he said.
The call for testimonies, which has already collected 6,000 calls, will end on October 31.
La Ciase must submit its assessment and its recommendations at the end of September-beginning of October 2021. In June its president made a first provisional estimate - a low range - of the extent of child crime in the Church in France since 1950, affirming that 'there were at least 3,000 victims and 1,500 aggressors.
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