Lasallians accused of imposing silence on compensated victims

I understood: “Take the sorrel and get out.” His voice still trembles with indignation. Victim in his childhood of sexual abuse in an establishment of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, this 78-year-old man signed a protocol in 2023 by which, in exchange for compensation, he undertook to “not make critical remarks” towards them, or even “not to provide any information whatsoever which could harm them”.

Cruel paradox: at the precise moment when, after years of suffering, victims engage in a process of reconstruction by contacting the guilty congregation, the influence of silence suffocates them again.

The Brothers of Christian Schools, also called Lasallians, named after their founder Saint John Baptist de La Salle, manage educational establishments on five continents. Between the 1950s and the 1980s, hundreds of children were victims of physical and sexual violence at their hands, according to the Lasallian Victims’ Collective, which spoke out in early February. Since 2014, in France, an internal listening cell has offered financial compensation. 70 victims thus received compensation, for a total amount of 2,434,882 euros.

Certainly, the protocol does not prohibit the victim from “testifying to past facts”, according to a sentence added in March 2023, but it prevents “criticizing the current functioning of an institution resolutely engaged in the work of recognition of past crimes”, specifies the lawyer of the congregation, Matthias Pujos. However, past and present remain linked, particularly regarding the dysfunctions of community systems. “Our life is broken, and we are once again subjected to the power of the Lasallians,” storms the founder of the Victims’ Collective (who does not wish to be named). Banning criticism appears to be, at a minimum, “a disproportionate attack on freedom of expression,” says Benjamin Moron-Puech, professor of private law and criminal sciences at Lumière Lyon 2 University.

No public regrets

Does this silence demanded of the victims mean that the congregation refuses to recognize its collective responsibility? In France, she does not speak out about the abuse – only her lawyer speaks – and does not express public regret. However, Lasallians are not the only ones to impose confidentiality. In the early days of the Recognition and Reparation Commission (CRR), created in 2021 to mediate between victims and congregations, many of them used confidentiality and non-disparagement clauses. Some have removed or reduced them.

Others have retained them, to varying degrees. According to the protocol proposed to Myriam Remy, victim of a member of the Beatitudes community (who does not collaborate with the CRR), she “cannot reveal anything about the mediation process and its closure”. In the one signed in 2023 by a 72-year-old man abused by a Benedictine monk, the victim must “maintain confidentiality regarding the content of this protocol”. In another, signed with the Vincentians in December 2024, she “irrevocably undertakes not to engage, directly or indirectly, in any behavior and/or indiscretion having the object or effect of harming the congregation.”

Restorative justice obstructed

Confidentiality clauses are common in transaction processes in the business world. In exchange for money, the parties waive recourse to court. But the context of sexual abuse in the Church is not that of a business. “There is a strong party and a weak party: the victim, very injured, alone facing a community,” notes Catherine Fabre, lawyer at the Canonical Criminal Court. Confidentiality hinders an essential element of restorative justice: public speech, the effect of which is liberating. And, sometimes, it discourages victims from completing the reparation process.

So that they do not have the impression of being the subject of a commercial agreement, a check is not enough. Congregations that insist on confidentiality and non-disparagement act out of fear, worried about their reputations and sometimes fragile finances. An approach of compassion and forgiveness, but also of recognition of responsibility, nevertheless proves essential. The Jesuits, among others, have organized “memorial days” in this sense. “The congregations which accepted almost total transparency were profoundly better off morally,” observes Sister Véronique Margron, former president of the Conference of Religious Men and Women of France (Corref). It remains for this transparency to become the norm.