Allegations of abuse have been made against Abbé Pierre, the late French Roman Catholic priest and former campaigner who has long been hailed as a modern-day saint.
In July, the anti-poverty Emmaus founded by Abbé Pierre said heard allegations of sexual harassment and abuse of seven women and believers.
Emmaus has now decided to expel Abbé Pierre from the organization after 17 other women spoke of being abused by him.
The priest, who died in 2007 at the age of 94, was often polled as one of France’s most popular people of the moment because of his tireless work for the poor and homeless.
The Emmaus organization, which he founded in 1949, operates in more than 40 countries. In France, his bald head and beard became a symbol of Christian self-sacrifice.
Now, following the second release of witness statements collected by Egaé, an independent consultant, the organization has decided to remove the name of Abbé Pierre from its various organizations.
The Abbé Pierre Foundation will be renamed, while the board of Emmaus France will vote to remove the priest’s name from its logo. The Abbé Pierre Center in Esteville in Normandy, where he lived for many years and was buried, is to be closed forever.
A decision will also be made on how to dispose of hundreds of sculptures, busts and other images of the charity’s creator.
“We are in a state of shock, very hurt and very angry,” said Christophe Robert, who runs the Abbé Pierre Foundation. “We extend our full support to all the victims who had the courage to speak.”
The first blow fell in July when the Emmaus organization presented the allegations made by seven women, who said they were victims of sexual abuse, especially by touching their breasts and unwanted kisses.
The 17 women who have come forward have made serious allegations in some cases.
One woman – designated as “J” by the Egaé consultancy – said she was forced to perform oral sex on Abbé Pierre, and watched him masturbate. “J” is dead now but he told his daughter his story.
The consultancy report also includes the experience of a woman named “M” in the 1990s who came to the minister in distress, asking for help to find a home.
“Their meetings or more were always accompanied by forced kissing and touching of breasts. Abbé Pierre put his hand on her (private parts) even though she was in her pants,” according to the report.
Another case relates to a girl, named “X”, who was only eight or nine years old when a priest is accused of abusing her in the mid-1970s, touching her chest and kissing her “with his tongue.”
Another worker in the National Assembly, where Abbé Pierre supported from 1945 to 1951, is quoted as saying that “we behaved like a rapist, we abused our female colleagues and had sexual relations with them.”
The Egaé report said there were many more accounts, but left out those given anonymously or where the complainants were reluctant to reveal full details. The latest claims relate to when the priest was 92 years old.
The sudden fall of a modern-day icon – only last year he was the subject of a hagiographic biopic – was greeted with less surprise than expected. A series of revelations about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church has seen that.
What is confusing to many is the mounting evidence that his colleagues at Emmaus – and in the Catholic Church – knew about Abbé Pierre’s sexual behavior, but failed to speak out.
In part this was because in these earlier times – the first allegations of assault were in the 1950s – such acts were not treated very harshly.
But when the news of Abbé Pierre’s unwanted progress became impossible to ignore, it seems certain that the church and the charities came together to keep his name out of the media, thus preserving his success for the poor and homeless.
Henri Grouès born in 1912 in Lyon, Abbé Pierre was ordained in 1938, taking a vow of chastity. He worked in the Resistance in World War Two, and became a household name in the winter of 1954 when he made a popular appeal on behalf of the homeless.
According to an investigation by Le Monde newspaper, the church management learned of his brutal behavior the following year when, during a visit to the US and Canada, he was asked to cut short the trip due to complaints from women.
Biographer Pierre Lunel said that after the 1954 appeal “there were groups of all kinds who wanted to pull the hair out of his beard.” It was total hero worship. At that time there were sexual incidents. “
In 1957 Abbé Pierre went to a clinic in Switzerland, ostensibly to recover from fatigue but actually to keep him out of trouble. After that the church insisted that he be accompanied by “the community” – a church assistant whose real job was to keep a close eye on him.
In fact from the 1960s his relationship with the church grew significantly, while his charity became a larger and more complex organization. For the next 40 years he remained as head, and a reference in France for humility and sacrifice.
Speaking on Monday, the head of Emmaus International, Adrien Caboche, confirmed that during all that time Abbé Pierre’s failure to keep his vow of chastity was not a secret to those in the know.
“We knew that Abbé Pierre had an emotional and sexual health. But we are all shocked because of the violence that has been shown now.”
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