The Fall of a French Charity Icon • FRANCE 24 English

now the charity Emos International is contemplating creating a fund for the victims of Abbe Pierre this after new report unveiled 17 fresh accusations of sexual violence by the now deceased French Catholic priest for more on this story we can bring in France 24's uh great to see you now these accusations a date from 2005 which was two years before abier died all the way back to the 1950s yeah let me take you back uh to 1955 to New York of all places abip was on a tour of the US he met with President Eisenhower and was basically being celebrated for his charity work his star status had been rising since the winter of 1954 which was an incredibly cold one in France uh and homeless people were freezing and dying in the streets it's then that he gave his famous radio plea and this led to an outpouring of generosity it also made Abbe Pierre who had founded mi in 1949 an embodiment of uh helping the in need uh that and that continued until this year uh in his regard but before we get into this fall from grace let's go back to New York uh because there is a darker behind the scenes story here uh two women accused the Catholic priest of Uninvited advances uh of his wanting to sleep with them radio France's uh investigation unit they even found letters uh by the priest threatening one of the women who was actually a student at the time uh not to speak out again or else now fearing a scandal uh essentially the trip was cut short then basically the same thing happened uh in Canada in the 1960s with Witnesses saying that an agreement uh was reached between the police and the church for ab Pierre uh to leave the country and never come back now I mention these two events because as of right now there are some 24 women who have come forward and accused the now deceased icon uh or former icon of a range of sexual violence unsolicited touching of their breasts forse kisses falatio and rape including the repeated ACC costing of a young girl who was eight or nine at the time uh and victims recount that such abuses actually continued until uh two years uh before ab's death in 2007 so these accusations span a period of what some 50 years and it's also been nearly two decades since AB Pierre died why are these accusations coming out now well there are multiple reasons for the quiet first there's Abel's iconic status breaking that down it takes incredible courage for he was essentially mother to France's Mother Teresa until this year uh his face is plastered across the country we'll get more into that in a minute there's also this element of celibacy uh of the vows taken by by priests uh of it being broken once was a huge Scandal and it's still against the rules as for why now well uh we are thankfully uh in a post me to era and also in 2021 the Catholic Church published uh find findings of the independent Commission of sexual abuse uh uh in the church the C and it found that some 300,000 people had been abused by the clergy between 1950 and 2020 with the church often hiding such abuse now todayz continues to track cases and make reparations the report also opened the floodgates of of testimonies about abuses including those of Abbe Pierre one victim went to mius and she explained that she was abused by the priest in 1980 and at that point Mi launched an investigation through the group aay and it shared the findings of uh initially seven cases this past July uh and it opened a hotline for women to come forward and that led to this second report this month in which uh 17 more uh uh women came forward miuse believes that they are there are likely others so it will keep the hotline open for at least until the end of the year um so it seems that M has been pretty proactive in trying to get to the bottom of this was there cover up well there is docum documentation of the church uh trying to get a handle of Abbe he was sent to a psychiatric hospital in Switzerland for 6 months in 1957 uh which takes on a whole new light now someone was also mandated to follow him around at miuse it's unknown who knew and to what extent they knew but there were rumors and there are reports of rumors today uh steps by mius France mius International the F Foundation AB they are pretty clear the foundation plans to remove his name the memorial uh uh the memorial place in his honor is closed emuse France is holding an emergency meeting in December to vote on removing mention of his founding the group and Mi International while they've launched an investigation into how this stayed silent for half a century uh and it is also thinking of a fund for the victims so the moves have been Swift uh there is none of this remove the artist uh from the art debate which we've seen uh with some people like Roman palansky and Woody Allen here these organizations while they say they are thinking of the victims they're also thinking potentially of the people uh that they help uh for SE 97% of these Charities funds they come from the generosity of the public and it is essential for that to continue but uh this may or may may not we'll have to see uh have hurt uh those their how they help people um hopefully not because they do incredible work I I saw one report that the mayor of Paris was thinking about stripping one of the streets in Paris that's named after AB Pierre um talk about a fall from grace thank you thank you very much for that