Swiss perspectives in 10 languages

Swiss diocese of Sion criticised for handling of victims of sexual abuse

Sion
The diocese of Sion admitted mistakes and announced an action plan. Keystone / Cyril Zingaro

The hearings of victims of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church were inappropriate in many cases in the diocese of Sion. This is the conclusion of an external and independent audit of the diocese's handling of abuse.

Check out our selection of newsletters. Subscribe here.

According to the report presented on Tuesday, the people surveyed often found the initial reception by a church member to be intimidating and unsupportive.

“This inadequacy of the first direct contact is compounded in particular by an institutional inertia in the processing of dossiers and a lack of proactivity in the follow-up,” said Stéphane Haefliger of Vicario Consulting, the firm commissioned to carry out the audit.

+ What next after Swiss Catholic Church sexual abuse revelations?

The diocese admitted mistakes and announced an action plan. Among other things, victims of abuse are to be better cared for and communication with them improved.

The report is based on interviews with around 20 victims of abuse and the analysis of around 15 files from the diocese archives.

Translated from German by DeepL/ts

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.

External Content
Your subscription could not be saved. Please try again.
Almost finished… We need to confirm your email address. To complete the subscription process, please click the link in the email we just sent you.
Daily news

Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox.

Daily

The SBC Privacy Policy provides additional information on how your data is processed.

Most Read
Swiss Abroad

Most Discussed

News

In compliance with the JTI standards

More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative

You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!

If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR