Abuse pressure mounts on French Church

Long-stifled complaints of clerical sexual abuse are emerging in dioceses around France, putting bishops accused of covering up for wayward priests under unprecedented pressure and casting a dramatic shadow over a Paris monsignor regarded as a leading Vatican expert on homosexuality.

This renewed look at past cases has resurrected accusations against Mgr Tony Anatrella, 75, a Paris social psychiatrist dubbed “the Church’s shrink” who is also a consultor to the Pontifical Councils for the Family and for Health Care Workers in Rome.

According to reports in France, at least two men who have accused him of sexually abusing them during psychological consultations plan to file suits. One is an ex-seminarian who hoped the monsignor could “cure” his homosexuality and accepted four years of intimate “consultations” before ending all contact. He filed an unsuccessful legal suit against Mgr Anatrella in 2006, according to the investigative website Mediapart.

Another said he had regular consultations with Mgr Anatrella for 15 years and stopped in 2011 after learning that others had complained of alleged abuse, Mediapart said. Two other persons are also preparing to file complaints, France 3 television reported. The monsignor has declined to comment on the reports and church officials have said any persons with complaints should file legal suits.

Mgr Anatrella faced three accusations of sexual abuse in 2006, but two were dropped because they were beyond the 10-year statute of limitations and the third was judged too weak to prosecute.

He caused a stir in February when it was reported that he had told newly appointed bishops at a Rome seminar that they “have no duty to report allegations to the police”. He denied that and was supported by the Vatican.

The steady drip-drip of embarrassing denunciations has come in the wake of revelations in February in Lyon archdiocese, where Cardinal Philippe Barbarin is accused of failing to report abusive priests to the authorities. The founding of the support group La Parole Libérée (The Liberated Word) has helped mobilise victims to speak out there and in other dioceses.

Reports from around the country in recent weeks speak of several dozen victims contacting their dioceses to reveal previously unpublicised abuse cases, some dating back decades.

A bishops’ conference decision last month to examine all past cases of abuse complaints, even those that did not lead to a formal legal complaint, should ensure that more of these accusations come to light. Complaints have often proven to be beyond the statute of limitations, effectively letting the dioceses concerned off the hook in the past.

The accusations against Mgr Anatrella came amid reports of several dozen other long-hidden cases emerging around the country. Several accusers said they had only learned recently where to report their complaints while others say bishops knew of the cases and did nothing. In Bayonne, Bishop Marc Aillet admitted he did not turn in a priest whose abuse he discovered in 2009. The priest, whose victim has filed a lawsuit for an incident dating back to 1990, was only reported to the police in mid-April.

Toulouse Archbishop Robert Le Gall announced last week that three priests there had been convicted of abuse or of possessing child pornography in recent years and his office was studying several further complaints.

A former monk was given a one-year suspended sentence in late April for two cases of abuse, in the third such verdict for the Saint John monastic community in Burgundy.

The revelations recall scandals in other countries in the past decade or so from which France seemed spared. French Church officials said at the time they had taken tough measures after the 2001 conviction of a bishop for not reporting an abusive priest .

Karlijn Demasure, head of the Centre for Child Protection at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, said the French bishops published a good document in 2003, but it had not led to any practical consequences, “and the victims felt abandoned”.