Évelyne Le Bris, representative of the collective of the victims of the good pastor, was heard before the commission of inquiry on school violence and state control methods, Thursday, March 20. She testifies to shocking facts that would have taken place in the 1960s.
What was happening behind the closed doors of the Institutes of the Congregation of Notre-Dame de Charité du Bon Pasteur, until they are closed in the 1970s? After revelations on the abuses suffered by the students of Notre-Dame-de-Bétharram, a commission of inquiry into school violence has been opened to identify the victims of Catholic education in recent years. Thursday, March 20, Évelyne Le Bris, representative of the collective of the victims of the good pastor, testified before this commission of inquiry, co-reported by Paul Vannier (LFI) and Violette Spillebout (set for the Republic).
Aged 75 today, she was enrolled in Angers in one of these establishments when she was still a teenager, in the 1960s. Named at the time “refuge”, as reported Slatethese establishments were religious institutions created in the 1840s and aimed to re -educate young girls in “perdition”. But their method has traumatized thousands of young girls, who have only been testifying to the abuse they have suffered.
Devoured by dogs
First of all, it is important to know that several victims had already testified in November 2022, in a documentary called “bad girls”, of Dubas. They talked about the reasons that made them sent to these establishments. This is notably the case of Revéline who explained that she had undergone several rapes from her neighbor when she was 15 years old. A crime of which she was the victim, but which earned her to be treated as the culprit. Marie-Christine, who had confided to the pointassured that he had been sent on the grounds that she was lazy.
In this documentary, we learned the abuse that young girls suffered. But it was not until March 20 of this year that a parliamentary commission of inquiry is interested. “The good sisters martyred us. When girls flee, they were mowed when they returned. They were locked up in the mitard. The mitard, I knew him many times,” said the broken. She also returned to the runaways of certain young girls, tracked down by dogs: “The girls flew, but, throughout the night with the German shepherds, we were invited to pass through all the gardens, all the groves to know if they were not climbed at the top of a tree to hide. And sometimes they missed it, they fell to the ground. That the dogs eaten it, in fact. ”
A shocking story for which Paul Vannier had to ask for details: “Sorry madam, just to understand, there you are talking about the dogs of whom?”, “Good sisters” confirmed the septuagenarian who added: “In the morning, it was not a hearse who came. It was a dumper with a horse and they placed it in it, as reported Paris Match.
In the documentary “bad girls”, we already learned that a good sister had “punished” a student by hitting her head against a sink until one of the young girls intervenes, frightened by blood. It was also learned that students had the right to wash their hair twice a year, that the rest of the toilet was done at the sink with cold water, summer and winter, and that physical abuse was legion. Once out of this hell, students, who have become young women whose state no longer paid their pension in their majority, had to fend for themselves, without school education, with a relationship with other distorted people, person to confide and nowhere to go. Many have been easy targets of prostitution networks, the others have done precarious work to survive.