Swiss Diocese of Sion announces action plan on sexual abuse

The action plan comes in response to an audit published in June that found poor management of sexual abuse accusations in the church. Louis Dasselborne

The Diocese of Sion has outlined an action plan to deal with sexual abuse. The measures detailed on Tuesday in a press release are designed to put the victim at the centre of any approach.

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The Diocese of Sion’s action plan aims to professionalise its counselling system, improve record-keeping and prevention, and enhance collaboration with victims’ associations. In concrete terms, abuse counsellors for the French-speaking part of the diocese will be trained on these aspects at the Institut Catholique de Paris, while a code of good conduct designed to prevent any abuse will be presented to pastoral workers.

A new flyer, entitled “Dare to talk about it”, details the four main places where victims of sexual abuse in the Church can be “listened to, supported or directed”. The document is being distributed to parishes, according to the diocese.

These measures follow the publication and presentation in June of the results of an external audit conducted by Vicario Consulting into the management of sexual abuse within the Diocese of Sion. The report singled out the Catholic institution’s “intimidating, confusing and unsupportive” reception when listening to victims, as well as “institutional inertia in handling cases and a lack of proactive follow-up”.

In response, the diocese of Sion promised to implement an action plan. “We want to put the victim at the centre of everything we do, because that’s who we have to think of first,” said Vicar General Pierre-Yves Maillard.

Towards a historical study

The audit also gathered “several disturbing concurrent testimonies” suggesting that within the Fully parish, between 1929 and 1983, under the aegis of a parish priest, “problems of sexual abuse may have been perpetrated”. Fully is located in the southern canton of Valais.

On Tuesday, the Diocese of Sion announced that it was also in contact with the Chair of Church History at the University of Fribourg to launch a historical study into the situation.

Further audits

Other audits of Catholic institutions are underway in Switzerland. The Abbey of St-Maurice, which is not part of the Diocese of Sion but reports directly to the Vatican, has commissioned an independent working group to carry out a similar audit. The results are expected by mid-2025.

These audits come after a study by the University of Zurich commissioned by three Catholic bodies. The researchers counted 1,002 cases of sexual abuse in Switzerland since the middle of the 20th century. According to them, this is just the tip of the iceberg, as most cases have not been reported and documents have been destroyed.

Translated from French by DeepL/jdp

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