Abbé Pierre: This testimony of sexual assault was ignored for 17 years

Esther Romero is one of 24 alleged victims of Abbé Pierre. She claims to have been sexually assaulted in 1988.

The events allegedly took place in 1988. Esther Romero, a Peruvian journalist and interpreter, claims to have been sexually assaulted by Abbé Pierre. She testified on RTL radio on October 25.

That year, on November 24, she had an appointment with him for an interview in Geneva, in a hotel near the train station around 8 a.m. “I arrived at his hotel, it was very, very cold outside,” she recalls. He came out of his room when he saw me get out of the elevator. I saw a very small, frail, very old man. I was 56, he was 72, I think. We were about to start the interview, but instead of sitting on his chair, he came close to me and pressed his body against me. And I, with astonishment, with shock, it seemed to me that he had an erection. I was in shock because I thought: “No, it can't be that, no, not at all, no”. He started rubbing my breast with his hands over my sweater. “He put his tongue in my mouth,” says Esther Romero, who did not file a complaint after the incident.

A “hypocrisy” of the Catholic Church

At first, she confided in a friend who put her in touch with the Abbé Pierre.  "I thought he was really a saint, like Mother Teresa would say.  So, 'I'm going to keep quiet until he dies. ' But I didn't know how many people he did it to," she explains. It was only 17 years later that Esther Romero decided to go public with her assault, in 2007, after the death of Abbé Pierre. She then spoke in a Peruvian media and the information did not provoke any reaction.

“It is hypocrisy on the part of the Catholic Church to hide this story for almost 70 years now, I know it,” she says. “For me, it's a scandal and it's good that it's now known everywhere,” says the alleged victim.

24 women accuse Father Pierre of sexual assault and/or rape. Three people were minors at the time of the events.