Women accuse famous French priest of sexual harassment

France’s most famous priest, Abbé Pierre, known for his social commitment, has been accused of sexual assault 17 years after his death. A report by the consulting firm Egaé, commissioned by the charities he founded, Emmaüs France, Emmaüs International and the Fondation Abbé Pierre, speaks of acts of violence against at least seven women between the late 1970s and 2005.

The eight-page document was written by Caroline De Haas, a French feminist activist and co-founder of Egaé. The report describes the “strong emotions” surrounding this investigation and the dichotomy between the powerful aura of a man who dedicated his life to the poor and the actions that describe his victims. “The dissonance between Abbé Pierre’s image, his desire for justice and equality, and his behavior toward women creates an enormous gap between those who admired him or admired his social commitment,” De Haas wrote.

“These revelations have shocked our organizations; these acts have fundamentally changed our view of a man who is best known for his fight against poverty, misery and exclusion,” the aid organizations said in response to the allegations. The French Bishops’ Conference (CEF) expressed its “pain” and “shame.”

He kissed her with force

According to the Christian weekly magazine the lifeThe investigation began after a woman read about the extensive sexual abuse uncovered by the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE) between 2019 and 2021. Something from her past came up, and in 2023 she decided to share her story with one of the main people responsible for the CIASE investigation, Véronique Margron, a nun and religious authority, who referred her to representatives of Emmaüs.

This first victim, named in report A, remembers Abbé Pierre as a friend of her parents. She says he regularly touched her breasts when she was a minor. In 1982, when she was 18, she went with him to Italy, where he repeatedly molested her. “He asked me to sit next to him in the car and kept holding my hand. One day, he came into our room without knocking.” When he returned from a trip to Charenton, he kissed her by force: “On the last evening, when I was saying goodbye to him, he suddenly and unexpectedly stuck his tongue in my mouth.”

Six years later, according to A’s testimony, Abbé Pierre asked her again in Mulhouse: “I had to meet him at the hotel. The porter said: ‘He’s waiting for you in his room.’ He was lying on the bed and asked me to come and lie down with him. I said: ‘No, no, let’s go.’ He got up.” In 2003, A. went to the priest with her father to confront him about what she had been through. She read him a text, which he then grabbed and destroyed in a paper shredder. At the end of the meeting, a witness interviewed for the report recalled, A’s father had said: “I think the priest will be very angry because I was very hard on him, you see, he behaved badly towards my daughter and I told him exactly what I thought about it.”

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