Abbé Pierre, a psychiatric patient ? A message sent to a minister speaks volumes about the suspicions of assault

The accusations of sexual violence against Abbé Pierre are multiply. Reading his correspondence says a lot about how he was perceived by his peers.

Abbé Pierre has been accused of sexual violence by many women. After the first seven testimonies in the spring, the revelations came thick and fast. On September 6, 17 new accusations were reported, some of which concern acts that could be considered rape, depending on their description. According to some of the testimonies, this behavior was known in several structures founded by the religious. The cases were often hushed up and Abbé Pierre even went so far as to threaten those who were aware of his alleged actions.

This is what was revealed by the investigation unit of Radio France, which looked into part of Abbé Pierre's correspondence. In one of the letters, dated 1955, Abbé Pierre addresses Suther Marshall, an American student who had co-organized Abbé's trip to the United States. During this trip, several women complained about the behavior of the priest. This visit was even cut short at the request of the Catholic theologian Jacques Maritain, in order to avoid scandal.

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Suther Marshall then reportedly decided to warn a relative of the man struggling with poor housing: “I saw so many things during the trip, the ways in which the Father acted as an individual. I think, for example, in Chicago, when it was explicitly decided that the condition of continuing the trip was that the father would never be alone. He agreed and then [disappeared] for hours, to the point of being late for a meeting,” he wrote. A letter that would not have pleased Abbé Pierre at all, who would have been threatening: “You promised not to interfere any more in this multitude of things where you only know how to accumulate havoc, chaos and infection. Know that not a single relapse will go unanswered, and if necessary [my answers will be] brutal, surgical.”

Abbot Pierre isolated to hush up affairs ?

In 1957, particularly following this affair, the Church and Emmaüs reportedly wanted to put the religious man on forced rest. He was then reportedly sent to a psychiatric clinic in Switzerland, interned under the official pretext of “health reasons”. However, the real reason for this estrangement seems clear to Axelle Brodiez-Dolino, author of 'Emmaüs and the Abbot Pierre,  from franceinfo: "the fear of a sex scandal. The Church needed Abbé Pierre who was restoring its image and popularity and could not afford for such a scandal to break out". For six months, Abbé Pierre allegedly took numerous medications, which knocked him out, sometimes sleeping for up to "seven days in a row". Emmaüs also reportedly demanded at that time that Abbé Pierre step down from management.

However, Edmond Michelet, Minister of the Civil Service at the time, reportedly intended to decorate Abbé Pierre for his public action. The Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Feltin, is said to have immediately reacted in a letter dated June 1958: “Let me assure you that at the present time this distinction is very inappropriate, because the person concerned is seriously ill, being treated in a psychiatric clinic in Switzerland and I think that because of these very difficult circumstances it is better not to speak of this abbot”.