On 5 October 2021, the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse within the French Catholic Church revealed its file. Its revelations had been chilling.
From 1950 to 2020, at least 330,000 minors had been sufferers of sexual abuse through clerics or laypersons throughout the Church.
In reaction, two unbiased our bodies had been created to take care of reparations: The National Body for Recognition and Reparation, and the Commission for Recognition and Reparation. More than a 12 months later, have the sufferers been in a position to search out peace? Far from it, says Nancy Couturier.
She was once assaulted and raped as a kid and was once the primary individual to take care of the Commission for Recognition and Reparation. For her, sufferers urgently want monetary reimbursement.
Seeking monetary justice
“We are asking for justice. Financial justice. We don’t have civil justice anymore. We want recognition of what we’ve gone through, [we demand] that victims are supported to the same extent as they suffered … and are still suffering, mentally and morally,” Nancy Couturier instructed Euronews.
After feeling humiliated through the Commission’s proposal for reimbursement, Nancy made up our minds to arrange an affiliation to assist different sufferers assert their rights. She’s no longer the one person who is offended: some had been best knowledgeable of the proposal through mail.
“You read the letter: the victim is well known, the priests are well known, everything that happened to her is well known… And then you read €37,000. I thought: that’s not possible, €37,000.”, Nancy mentioned.
“To get the €60,000, you must have to be bedridden, I don’t know… It’s disgusting, it’s not on!”
€60,000 is the utmost quantity of reimbursement to be had. That’s no longer sufficient for Mr Sannier, the affiliation’s attorney. He instructed Euronews that reimbursement must mirror the offences dedicated.
“It won’t exceed the amount I got before the judicial court in Saint-Etienne for a priest who put his hand on a boy’s buttocks,” Jean Sannier defined.
And that’s the issue, he explains, since the bills for sufferer care aren’t taken under consideration through the commissions.
“When you’ve spent more than €60,000 on therapy and you’re capped at €60,000, you won’t get any compensation,” he added.
For Mr Sannier, that is about safeguarding the Church’s cash. The president of the Commission for Recognition and Reparation, Antoine Garapon, believes that no amount of cash can restore those shattered lives.
“We think it would be dishonest to hold out the prospect […] of a full reparation that they will never get because you simply can’t make up for what’s happened to these people,” he instructed Euronews.
Another reason for fear is the silence. To date, not up to 1% of the 200,000 sufferers in France have begun a reparation procedure.
