the controversies surrounding the Egae firm and its director Caroline de Haas

The investigation report on Abbé Pierre makes shocking revelations, but it is already fueling controversy. Since its publication on Wednesday, July 17, attention has been focused on the Egaé firm, which conducted the investigation. The professional equality consultancy agency, co-founded by feminist activist Caroline de Haas, has already been the subject of several controversies.

However, the Emmaüs International movement has chosen to call on the Egaé firm between March and June 2024 to investigate Abbé Pierre. The most famous priest in France is said to have committed serious acts and made inappropriate remarks against young women from the late 1970s to 2005. Facts which, according to the report, can be described as sexual assault.

The latter is the result of several months of investigative work by the Egaé firm and a dozen interviews, led by Caroline de Haas. It collected the testimony of seven alleged victims and specified that five other people may have suffered violence “without it being possible at this stage to hear them”.

Biased investigations?

This agency offers training against sexual violence, but it also supports structures that request its support in cases of violence already identified. It therefore conducts investigations and sets up a reporting mailbox. Emmaüs assures the media that the choice of this firm was in no way political.

However, some people criticize Egaé for her political orientation, because Caroline de Haas’ activism could call into question the impartiality of the investigations. In 2018, the activist declared in an interview with L’Obs that “one in two or three men is an aggressor”. Later, in 2022, she declared on Twitter that “the national police and justice are anti-women and anti-children institutions”, before deleting her message.

Several media outlets also criticize Caroline de Haas for launching a lucrative business model around equality training. According to an investigation by Le Point, the activist helped to pass a text in 2012 that requires public institutions to fund training against sexual harassment. She was then employed in Najat Vallaud-Belkacem’s ministerial office, a year before co-directing the Egaé agency.

An enlightening but incomplete report

A court decision also discredited the firm. In 2019, Egaé conducted the investigation in the weekly Telerama and a journalist was accused of sexual harassment in the report. The investigation led to the journalist’s dismissal, but a new judicial investigation, conducted by the Paris industrial tribunal, contradicted the report. The journalist was reinstated to his editorial staff and the weekly was convicted of unfair dismissal.

Is the investigation report on Abbé Pierre reliable? According to the daily The crossthe conclusions help to shed light on obscure points about the priest’s behavior. But they have an “unfinished character”, because the report is a compilation of testimonies from alleged victims and they are not reproduced in their entirety.

La Croix also notes that some contextual elements are missing, such as details on the state of health of Abbé Pierre and his place in the Church at the time of the events. There is also a lack of contradiction, because the founder of Emmaüs is now deceased. Some information on his ambiguous personality may therefore never come out of the shadows.