Sex abuse survivor says 'generations of aggressors' molested some 216,000 victims since 1950, ahead of French Catholic Church abuse report
"It's an earthquake, a hurricane, a tsunami ... when you see these numbers," says Olivier Savignac, who was sexually abused by a priest in 1993, at the age of 13, inside the French Catholic Church, ahead of publication of dossier on church crimes.
An independent commission spent more than 2-1/2 years investigating sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in the country over the past seven decades. It is set to present its findings at 9 am on Tuesday. "We can see how systemic it was ... with an estimated number of 216,000 victims," Savignac told Reuters news agency, quoting the report and adding that the Church could not have ignored something of that magnitude.
Savignac said: "The number of 3,000 means that all the bishops knew about it, almost all of them, 3000, it means that generations of aggressors were allowed to carry on with it and if we put it in relation with the figure of 216,000 which is the number of victims, that is devastating, because the ratio between 216,000 and 3000, it's one aggressor for 70 victims.
"What we expect from the Church is an answer to the level of what people have suffered," Savignac said, "and that can't be throwing a few thousand euros at it and say it's behind us. No, there is a need for proper compensation to the level of what each person suffered.
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