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New testimonies of sexual abuse emerge at Catholic school in Nantes
French Catholic education authorities in the Loire-Atlantique region announced Friday that new testimonies of sexual abuse have surfaced concerning the Saint-Stanislas secondary school in Nantes. The alleged acts, committed between 1958 and 1995, involve ten victims and five priests, all now deceased, as well as at least one member of the teaching staff.
According to Frédéric Delemazure, director of Catholic education in the department, the testimonies describe rapes, assaults, and inappropriate touching, most of them taking place in the boarding facilities of the school, with at least one incident reported during holidays organized by the institution. The victims — nine men and one woman — were students at the time.
“These incidents occurred during three distinct periods: 1958–1978, 1980–1981, and 1991–1995,” Delemazure specified, confirming that the cases have been referred to judicial authorities.
The Bishop of Nantes, Laurent Percerou, urged more people to come forward, regardless of when the abuse took place: “What matters now is that potential other victims feel able to speak out,” he declared.
The revelations come in the wake of a 2021 report by an independent commission which estimated that around 330,000 minors were victims of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church in France, including 108,000 in Catholic schools.
Delemazure added that the first testimonies collected this year may have been prompted by the Bétharram scandal, another Catholic institution in southwestern France implicated in widespread abuse cases that also drew political attention