Who Can You Trust?

 

Last summer my sisters and niece came to visit me. One day I took them to the local store and community of the Emmaus Foundation. It’s in Bernes-sur-Oise, a small town on the banks of the Oise River near where I live.

I love that store, which sells recycled or donated goods. Its bookshop is as good as a “real” bookstore. You can also find great buys on furniture, and often there are special sales: stationery supplies, all new, at the beginning of the schoolyear, a “white sale” of antique linens, a sale of picture frames.

White sale of antique linens

Connected to the store there are residences where the “companions of Emmaus” live, men and women down on their luck, with nowhere else to go, looking to pull themselves back up. Many of them work in the store, some are managers in charge of a department, like the “bookstore man,” quiet and efficient. In the clothing department, where my sister Susan found some good buys on children’s clothes, we met the manager from Bangladesh, speaking perfect English.

Emmaus was founded in 1949 by Henri Grouès, best known to the French as Abbé (Abbot) Pierre. It was a community that opened its doors to the poor and those in need.

On February 1, 1954, in a radio broadcast, Abbé Pierre cried out for help: That night, at 3 AM, a woman was found frozen to death in the streets of Paris, clutching the eviction notice that left her homeless. In March of that year, so great was the outpouring of aid that Emmaus became a charitable foundation dedicated to decent housing for all.

In 1971 Emmaus went international. In 1988, the Abbé Pierre Foundation for Decent Housing for the Poor was created. Today there are more than 425 local groups of Emmaus around the world.

In November 2023, a biopic of Abbé Pierre’s life, was released. The movie was relatively successful, and those who saw it were deeply moved.

Perhaps the film would have had more success if, in June 2023, a woman had not contacted the Emmaus Foundation to reveal she had been sexually assaulted by Abbé Pierre. Since then, more women have come forward. In July of this year, Emmaus called for an internal investigation undertaken by outside counsel, choosing Egaé, a consultancy firm dedicated to equal rights for men and women.

Since then, the number of complaints has multiplied: forced fellations, sexual attacks, and some cases of child abuse. Many women who did not dare speak for decades—there are complaints against Abbé Pierre going back 70 years—are now coming forward. Some went to their graves with their secret. Others spoke of their distress but were not believed. A son witnessed for his deceased mother. For years, she claimed she had been abused by Abbé Pierre. No one in the family took her seriously. 

One thing is certain. Already, in the 1950’s, Church hierarchy knew as did many in the Emmaus movement. During a 1957 trip to the United States, a young student who helped organize Abbé Pierre’s stay complained of sexual assault. A high-up member of Emmaus resigned in protest over Abbé Pierre’s behavior. In the end, the affair was hushed up. “Anglo-Saxons,” as the French sometimes call us, were just too hung up about sex.

In 1957-58, Abbé Pierre was quietly sent off to Switzerland for a rest cure. It doesn’t seem to have done much good, for the abuse continued till the abbot’s death in 2007.

Americans may have a hard time measuring the impact of these revelations on French society. Abbé Pierre was God, as some of the women now coming forward say. He represented the very best of France and of the Church. He did much to help the poor and homeless—all the while abusing women and threatening those who wanted to speak out.

The Abbé Pierre Foundation and Emmaus have two mottoes: “Etre humain,” Be human,” and “Ne pas subir, toujours agir,” Don’t suffer, always take action.” This is what women were unable to do for 70 long years. Abbé Pierre was a saint. Those who knew kept silent. Those who spoke out were not believed.

Now there is outcry about sexual abuse in the priesthood, but another “sex scandal” currently playing out in a French courtroom in Avignon proves that the Church is not the only source of sexual abuse. In fact, today in France, less than 2% of reported cases of sexual abuse and violence concern the Catholic Church.

The case I am referring to is that of Dominique Pélicot, 71 years old, accused of drugging his wife of 50 years, Gisèle, also aged 71, and inviting into their home men who raped her while her husband filmed the scene. This continued for ten years. So heavily and frequently was Gisèle drugged that her children believed she suffered from Alzheimer’s and wanted her confined to an Alzheimer’s-care unit. 

Gisèle Pélicot entering the courtroom in Avignon. It was her choice to not have the trial take place behind closed doors. She believes it is the perpetrators, not the victim, who should bear the shame.

Dominique Pélicot and 50 ordinary men recruited on the internet—and identified by the police—have been declared “monsters.” The same has been said of Abbé Pierre. Yet, who can deny that violence against women has been tolerated for pretty much as long as men and women have inhabited this earth?

Crying out in horror is easy. For all of us to accept that any form of sexual violence is intolerable, society as a whole must change.

Women’s rights, in France or in the USA, remain a work in progress. In an American presidential election year, can a man who brags about “grabbing pussy” be trusted to respect women’s rights? Can his running mate, supported by a billionaire who believes it was a mistake to give women the vote? What about Project 2025, which seeks to severely curtail a woman’s access to adequate healthcare?

Worth thinking about, isn’t it?

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