Late Abbé Pierre, Founder of Emmaus, Accused of Groping by Six Women
La-Croix.com reports that an eight-page summary on the allegations was finalised on 17 July. The investigation was done for Emmaus by a certain Caroline De Haas of the dubious feminist organisation ‘Osez le féminisme !’ (Dare feminism!).
Who was Father Henri Grouès?
At the age of 16, Henri Grouès wanted to join a religious order, but he was too young. At 18, he entered the Capuchins in Crest, Southeastern France. He was ordained a priest in 1938. Because of health problems (lung infections), he left the place and became chaplain to the sick in several places.
According to his official biography, he was a member of the French Resistance and helped Jews to escape to Switzerland. His pseudonym, Abbé Pierre, dates from this period.
He was arrested twice during the Second World War, but was quickly released.
In 1949, he started 'Emmaus' with a house for homeless. He became famous during the extremely cold winter of 1954 in France, when homeless people were dying in the streets. His appeal raised 500 million francs (2 million from Charlie Chaplin).
He was regularly voted 'France's favourite person' and for decades.
The rather harmless new accusations
In June 2023, a woman contacted the leaders of the Emmaus movement and testified to sexual acts imposed on her at the end of the 1970s when she was a minor.
Emmaus started an investigation that found six other complainants. They remain anonymous.
Their accounts are rather superficial and do not give a sufficient picture of the situations. As the accused person is deceased, it is difficult to obtain unequivocal evidence.
Six women reported groping. Another only described sexist remarks and unwanted advances.
One woman is the daughter of a couple close to the priest. When she was between 16 and 17 years old, Abbé Pierre, who was almost fifty years older than her, touched her breast several times in the family home, which is now considered a sexual assault.
In 1982, when she was an adult, she returned from a trip to Italy and he "put his tongue in my mouth in a brutal and totally unexpected way", she testified.
At the end of the 1980s Abbé Pierre suggested that she get into bed with him.
In 2003, a few years before his death, the priest apologised to her in the presence of her father.
Another woman reported that between 1977 and 1980 he began to fondle her breast.
A decade later, he confronted her again: "I went up to him to shake his hand. He tried to pull me towards a window and I said: 'Abbé, don't'. He replied, 'I need it.' I said, 'No.'" Then, she said, they both left.
Three other women reported non-consensual touching of their breasts between 1995 and 2005.
Sometimes this behavious was followed by solicitations: "He kept writing to me letters and calling me. He said he wanted to be with me."
One person described a scene from the 1950s or 1960s: Abbé Pierre was in a boat with a woman and had "jumped on her", adding that it was "part of the character, we tried to limit the damage".
According to an employee at the time, female colleagues were instructed not to see Abbé Pierre alone.
This is the picture painted by the report: He was admired by many but indulged his urges towards women. And: A small circle knew about it.
Public confession of sexual sins
At the end of his life, Abbé Pierre admitted that he had broken his vow of chastity: "I had the experience of sexual desire and its very rare satisfaction," he said in a book of interviews published in 2005 by Frédéric Lenoir.
In 1957, Abbé Pierre was hospitalised in Switzerland with a painful hernia. He was then removed from the Emmaus leadership, officially for health reasons.
The historian Axelle Brodiez-Dolino writes in a biography published in 2009, writes that the reason for the removal was rather the fear of a "scandal" if the public learned of the media icon's violations of chastity.
Picture: Henri Grouès? © wikicommons CC BY-SA, #newsTgwetbfoec
