Abbé Pierre accused of sexual assault by several women
It is a French icon now tainted by scandal. On Wednesday, July 17, the Emmaüs International association published a report that implicates Abbé Pierre for serious actions against young women.
Six women reported facts that could be described as sexual assault. A seventh reported sexist remarks and indecent solicitations. According to the newspaper La Croix, a woman first approached the leaders of the Emmaüs movement in June 2023 to report touching. An Emmaüs delegation then met the alleged victim three months later before launching an investigation into Father Henri Grouès, his real name. Abbé Pierre, who died in 2007, was the founder of the Emmaüs community and a symbol of the fight against exclusion, poverty and poor housing.
The Emmaüs association entrusted this investigation to the Egaé firm, headed by feminist activist Caroline De Haas, founder of the Osez le féminisme! association. Four months of work, between March and June 2024, to identify alleged victims and various witnesses, resulted in an eight-page investigation report. It is made up of extracts from the testimonies of the seven alleged victims. But it also takes into account five other people “who may have suffered acts of violence”, “without it being possible at this stage to hear them”, the report specifies.
A recurring modus operandi
The accounts in the report are anonymous and span from the late 1970s to 2005. The priest, who died in 2007, is said to have approached some young women when they were still minors. One of them was the daughter of a close couple, aged 16 or 17. Father Pierre is said to have touched her breasts several times in the family home. Then, in 1982, when she had come of age, he is said to have “put his tongue in (her) mouth in a brutal and totally unexpected way” when saying goodbye to her. The priest is said to have subsequently asked the young woman to lie down with him in a bed in the late 1980s. A few years before his death, he is said to have apologized to her.
La Croix reports that other extracts from testimonies in the report indicate the same modus operandi. Abbé Pierre allegedly took advantage of discreet moments, “in an office”, “at the foot of a staircase in a type of airlock” or even in a hotel room, to approach young women, employees or volunteers at Emmaüs. One of them reports that he began to “grope her left breast” in the middle of a conversation, at the end of the 1970s. Another describes non-consensual acts on her chest, and a disturbing insistence on seeing her again. “He continued to write to me, by mail, to telephone me. (…) After a month or two, it stopped.” she explains.
Some excerpts cast doubt on the possibility of even more serious acts. One person admitted, during an interview conducted by the Egaé firm, that he had witnessed a violent scene in the 1950s or 1960s. “Abbé Pierre was in a boat with a woman and allegedly ‘jumped on her'”. The witness reportedly added: “it was part of the character, we were trying to limit the damage”.
The Church reacts and welcomes the investigative work
The report thus analyses the very important place that Abbé Pierre occupied in the Emmaüs movement and in society. Caroline De Haas points out a “deified” character”, “a form of influence fuelled by the age difference, the status of Abbé Pierre and a form of idolatry, or the situation of subordination between him and people.”
After numerous scandals of sexual abuse within Christian associations, the Church wanted to react quickly. The Conference of Bishops of France published a first press release in which it “wishes to assure the victims of its deep compassion and shame that such acts could be committed by a priest”. “While waiting to learn of the published report”, the CEF adds that, despite the “remarkable impact” of Abbé Pierre in the world, his position “cannot exempt him from the necessary work of truth, which Emmaüs has just carried out with clarity and courage”.
