Evil comes to light - will justice be served?
Nuns used crucifixes to rape girls during decades of abuse carried out by clergy in France's Catholic Church that saw attacks on 330,000 children covered up 'by a veil of silence', a damning report has found.
A victim named 'Marie' testified that she was abused as an 11-year-old and that when she complained about the abuse to her parents they refused to believe a nun could do such a thing. The abuse continued for another year.
'I was truly [a gift] for this nun... because she knew full well that she did not risk anything,' Marie said.
Eighty per cent of victims were young boys between the ages of 10 and 13, however many girls also suffered abuse, not only by priests but also by nuns.
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The president of the commission that issued the report, Jean-Marc Sauvé, said the estimate, based on scientific research, includes abuses committed by priests and others clerics as well as by non-religious people involved in the church.
The report says an estimated 3,000 'criminal paedophiles' - two-thirds of them priests - have preyed on hundreds of thousands of mainly young boys who were at Catholic schools and other institutions.
Some 86 per cent of victims were male children - many of whom did not report the abuse they suffered for decades.
Sauvé said the overall figure of victims includes an estimated 216,000 people abused by priests and other clerics.
The independent inquiry covered alleged sex abuse of minors by French Catholic priests, deacons and other clergy since 1950, and found the abuse was a 'massive phenomenon' that was covered up for decades by a 'veil of silence.'
The independent commission, made up of 22 lawyers, doctors, historians, sociologists and theologians, worked for two-and-a-half years, listening to victims and witnesses and studying church, court, police and press archives starting from the 1950s.
A hotline launched at the beginning of the probe received 6,500 calls from alleged victims or people who said they knew a victim.
'The consequences are very serious,' Sauvé said. 'About 60 per cent of men and women who were sexually abused encounter major problems in their sentimental or sexual life.'
The 2,500-page document comes as the Catholic Church in France, like in other countries, seeks to face up to shameful secrets that were long covered up and follows widespread outrage over a string of paedophilia claims and prosecutions against Church officials worldwide.
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