To delve into a case more than thirty years old is to unearth yellowed photos, bring out hearing minutes typed on a typewriter and come across handwritten letters.
It’s also about stirring up sometimes buried memories that have never really come out.
Shut up for years until a call for witnesses turns lives upside down and brings back the demons of a stolen childhood.
This is the case of Benoît, 52, who on January 29 filed a complaint with the Hauts-de-Seine Territorial Security to denounce sexual assaults that occurred from 1984 to 1988, between the ages of 13 and 17, and which allegedly were committed by Jean-Michel Merlin, a member of the Focolare as a consecrated layman - that is to say committed without having the status of priest - and, at the time, director and editor-in-chief of the newspaper Nouvellecité, the media of this Catholic movement created in 1943. Like all Focolarinis, this trained engineer, now 83 years old, had taken a vow of poverty, chastity and obedience.
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