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Diocese of Lyon Launches Extensive CSA Formation Website

The Diocese of Lyon, France, recently launched a new section of their website dedicated to bringing different sectors to work together to counter sexual abuse. The project includes a series of twelve filmed interviews conducted with different persons affected by the crisis, including victims, psychiatrists, a police officer, a magistrate, a journalist, a theologian, and pastors. The site includes links to training and prevention tools and aims to be a resource for education for the prevention of abuse.

Véronique Garnier, author of Au Troisieme Jour, is a survivor who has shared her story with CCP students in Rome and is one of the experts interviewed for the project. In her 30-minute interview that opens the series, she speaks about woundedness, as she was a victim of abuse at the hands of a priest from the age of thirteen to the age of fifteen. She shares her story to address members of the Church and families with a message of hope and faith.

In an interview with Aleteia, the head of the communications team of the Diocese of Lyon explained the motivation for taking on the project. After observing that there were many different opinions regarding how Cardinal Barbarin, the former Archbishop of Lyon (convicted for the cover-up of the abuse of Bernard Preynat), ought to have acted, they reached out to experts for answers and thus created a website with practical proposals for action.

The videos are meant to facilitate group discussion. They are accompanied by in-depth questions, provoking critical thinking about the topic of clerical sexual abuse. The interviews are a useful resource not only for the local church of Lyon but also for other local churches and communities.