Hundreds of thousands of children were abused in the Catholic Church in France over the past 70 years, an independent commission concluded on Tuesday.

The Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE) published its final report on Oct. 5 at a live-streamed presentation in Paris.

The almost 2,500-page report said that an estimated 216,000 children were abused by priests, deacons, monks, or nuns from 1950 to 2020.

It added that when abuse by other Church workers was also taken into account, “the estimated number of child victims rises to 330,000 for the whole of the period.”

Presenting the report, Jean-Marc Sauvé, president of CIASE, said: “While, in absolute and relative terms, these acts of violence were in decline up until the early 1990s, they have since stopped decreasing.”

“The Catholic Church is the place where the prevalence of sexual violence is at its highest, other than in family and friend circles.”

“Faced with this scourge, for a very long time the Catholic Church’s immediate reaction was to protect itself as an institution and it has shown complete, even cruel, indifference to those having suffered abuse.”

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