It was another Dupont de Ligonnès affair. Without any link with one of the news items that most marked the French. The investigation targeting the mother and sister of Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès for abuse of weakness against a background of possible sectarian aberrations was dismissed for “insufficiently characterized offense”, said the Versailles prosecutor’s office on Tuesday. The investigation against X had been entrusted at the end of 2019 to the Central Office for the Suppression of Violence against Persons as well as to the Regional Directorate of the Judicial Police of Versailles.
At the head of a prayer group called “Le jardin” or “Philadelphie”, Geneviève Dupont de Ligonnès, the mother of the most wanted man in France, and Christine Dupont de Ligonnès, one of the latter’s sisters , were suspected of having influenced at least one elderly couple living in eastern France – one of whom died in 2019.
At the time, the Interministerial Mission for Vigilance and the Fight against Sectarian Abuses (Miviludes) indicated that it had received “reports on this prayer group of traditionalist Catholic inspiration created in 1970 by Geneviève Dupont de Ligonnès and whose daughter Christine seems to have taken over the leadership.
“My clients want to regain anonymity”
The group had been in the crosshairs of Miviludes for many years. In 2011 in particular, she had already received several reports on “Philadelphia”, signaling “risks of sectarian aberrations” based in particular on “apocalyptic type messages”. The main association of victims of sects, Unadfi, spoke at the time of a “delusional doctrine”.
In September 2019, Miviludes had made a report to the Versailles prosecutor’s office about a family seeming to be under the influence and being forced to sell their pavilion. “No surprise as to this classification without follow-up because the offenses were not constituted”, reacted Me Stéphane Goldenstein. “My clients want to regain the anonymity that was theirs and that we stop defaming them through the exploitation of the affair which concerns Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès, in particular Marlène Schiappa who clearly got the wrong target”, added the lawyer.
In October 2020, then Minister Delegate for Citizenship, Marlène Schiappa, denouncing an “upsurge” sectarian phenomenon in France, indicated in the columns of Le Parisien wanting to “better understand” the “operation” and “implantation” of “the Church of Philadelphia”.