Nuns Used Crucifixes to Rape Girls in Horrific Abuse Involving 330,000 Children
Catholic authorities covered up the abuse for decades,
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Catholic nuns used crucifixes to rape girls in a campaign of horrific sexual abuse spanning decades and involving 330,000 thousand victims.
A new report estimating hundreds of thousands of children were abused over the last 70 years was welcomed by victims.
Neon Nettle reported earlier this week that almost 3,200 pedophile priests have been working in the French Catholic Church since the 1950s, according to the president of an independent commission on sexual abuse.
According to the new report, nuns used crucifixes to rape girls and force boys to have sex with them.
Catholic authorities covered up the abuse for decades, according to the commission's president, which issued the report.
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The report said of these 330,000 victims includes an estimated 216,000 people abused by priests along with other clerics.
The rest involved abuse from church figures such as scout leaders or camp counselors.
The estimates come from research by France's National Institute of Health and Medical Research.
The church was encouraged to take decisive action by the independent commission.
It also urged the Catholic Church to help compensate the victims.
"We consider the church has a debt towards victims," Sauvé said.
Two of those victims, both in their 70s, were sexually assaulted by a priest when they were teenage girls in high school.
"It brings on such terrible thoughts," one victim named Martine said.
"For me, personally, I had to wait for my parents to die because otherwise, she said it was not possible to speak out."
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"I think that each victim experienced it as if they were the only one (victim), and that's part of this phenomenon involving control and secrecy," Another victim, Mireille, said.
"We are in a condition of submission... in a mental captivity. So, we follow this person who suddenly takes power over us... We are caught in a spider web."
The head of the victims association Parler et Revivre, Olivier Savignac, contributed to the investigation.
He recounted being abused at 13 years old by the director of a Catholic vacation camp in the south of France.
"I perceived this priest as someone who was good, a caring person who would not harm me," Savignac said.
"But it was when I found myself on that bed half-naked, and he was touching me, that I realized something was wrong... It's like gangrene inside the victim's body and the victim's psyche."
The priest was found guilty of child sexual abuse and sentenced to three years in prison in 2018.
Sauvé said:
"Sometimes church officials did not denounce (the sex abuses) and even exposed children to risks by putting them in contact with predators."
Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, the president of the Conference of Bishops of France, said the french bishops are appalled by the report.
"I wish on that day to ask for pardon, pardon to each of you," he told the victims.
"No one expected such a high number (of victims) to come out of the survey, and that is properly frightening and out of proportion with the perception that we've had on the ground."
