In a Church mired in abuse scandals, the rape and exploitation of women Religious has stayed hidden. A French documentary aims to bring the truth to light.

The French documentary Sex Slaves of the Catholic Church, over an hour and a half long, was first shown in 2017, before being withdrawn for legal reasons. It’s easy enough to see why it might have run into trouble: its claims are incendiary, horrifying. Even allowing for a narration that often collapses into melodrama and hyperbole (due partly to the strange translations in the subtitles), the evidence is plainly there to support directors Eric Quintin and Marie-Pierre Raimbault’s argument that many women members of religious orders, all over the world, have been sexually abused by priests.

The film, now available again and streaming on Arte (to 10 May), concentrates first on particular cases of abuse in Europe – in France and Italy specifically – and then moves on to a systemic culture of sexual abuse in West Africa where sisters tell of being pimped out by their mother superiors to local priests in return for money or preferment.

We begin in France where the Philippe brothers, both Dominicans who achieved great standing in the religious world and beyond, routinely abused the sisters who looked to them for guidance – even seeming to have made a secretive personal cult of sexual manipulation. Fr Thomas Philippe was the spiritual mentor of Jean Vanier, the founder of L’Arche, and Fr Marie-Dominique Philippe was a founder of the Community of St John. Both were charismatic and wielded great authority – particularly over women, often young and inexperienced, accustomed and accepting of a patriarchy, often drawn to the apparent safety of religious life because they were troubled and unsure.