Around a dozen reports of abuse at Saint-Maurice Abbey
Published: Wednesday, Nov 29th 2023, 12:00
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More than a dozen people have reported possible abuse in connection with Saint-Maurice Abbey or the church environment to the Valais prosecution authorities within a week. The background to this is the media revelations about cases of sexual abuse within the abbey.
The public prosecutor's office and the Valais cantonal police announced on Wednesday that every report would be taken into consideration. The reported facts will be analyzed by the criminal investigation team and are the subject of investigations.
This group was set up in September following the publication of a report by the University of Zurich on the abuses committed in Switzerland within the Roman Catholic Church and their cover-up.
The public prosecutor's office pointed out that the presumption of innocence applies to the accused persons during the preliminary proceedings. The aim of these proceedings is to find out whether acts that have been prosecuted ex officio, untreated and not time-barred have taken place on cantonal territory.
As part of these preliminary proceedings, the Valais public prosecutor's office and the cantonal police also went to Saint-Maurice Abbey last week to question the interim abbot, who has since resigned from his post. He is accused of sexually abusing a novice who was of age at the time. The prosecution authorities were also granted access to the archives.
According to a report by RTS television in French-speaking Switzerland, around ten canons are said to be involved in cases of sexual abuse within Saint-Maurice Abbey. In the pilot study by the University of Zurich, researchers counted 1002 cases of sexual abuse since the middle of the 20th century. In their opinion, this is only the tip of the iceberg, as most cases were not reported and the documents were destroyed.
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