2024-07-17 14:34:16
Founder of Emmaus Movementhim said Pierre (died in 2007), a figure until now in France, has been accused by seven women of sexual assault and assault between 1970 and 2005, the organization announced this Wednesday.
The independent report authorized and released by the group includes testimonies from seven women (workers or volunteers, and one of them was minor at the time of the events) who contradicted these events.
The report begins after a year ago Emmaus France took over evidence of sexual assault made by Abbé Pierre, for which the organization has put a special research object.
“This work made it possible to receive the testimonies of seven women who reported behaviors that could be considered sexual abuse or sexual acts committed by Abbe Pierre between the end of the 1970s and 2005,” in a statement from the Emmaus Movement said.
One of the women was a minor (16 or 17 years old) at the time of the events. The report notes that “it is reasonable to think that there are other people involved, although in a number that is difficult to estimate,” the statement added.
Those who report inappropriate behavior, sexual advances, comments that include sexual comments, attempts at unsolicited physical contact, and touching in the local sex. One of them said he has suffered mental problems since then.
The movement knows “the number of people who have given their testimony.” “We believe them and we know that these reckless actions have left their mark, and we are on their side,” the source stressed.
He also admitted that “these revelations are shocking to our parts” and also “completely changed the way we look at a man known above all for his fight against poverty, depression and exclusion.”
Abbe Pierre (1912-2007), whose name was Joseph Henry Grouès, was a liberal Catholic. Emmaus Movement in 1949 (originally called ‘The Ragpickers of Emmaus’) as a way to fight poverty and social exclusion, especially of homeless people.
An important moment in his career was on February 1, 1954 when, in the middle of a cold wave in Paris, he went to a radio station to make a plea to prevent the homeless from dying on the streets of the city and in In a very short time, gifts and offers of help fell control power.
Known as the ‘angel of the poor’, it is his council 303 groups operate in France, and more than 400 in 40 other countriess.
The French Episcopal Conference expressed its “pain” on learning the news and told the victims its “deep pity and shame that such actions could have been carried out by a priest.”
He added, in a statement, that although Abbe Pierre had “an important role” in the “awakening of consciences about the responsibility of all people for the people in the preceding situations,” the picture “could not avoid the work of the essential truth that ended up carrying Emmaus, with purity and courage”
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