Esther Romero is one of Abbé Pierre’s 24 alleged victims. She claims to have been sexually assaulted in 1988.
The events allegedly took place in 1988. Esther Romero, a Peruvian journalist and interpreter, claims to have been sexually assaulted by Abbé Pierre. She testifies on the microphone of RTL this October 25.
That year, on November 24, she had an appointment with him for an interview in Geneva, in a hotel near the station around 8 a.m. “I arrived at his hotel, it was very, very cold outside, she remembers. He came out of his room when he saw me coming out of the elevator. I saw a very small man, frail, very old. I was 56, he was 72 I think we were going to start the interview, but instead of sitting in his chair, he came close to me and pressed his body against me. astonishment, with shock, it seemed to me that he had an erection I was in shock because I thought: ‘no, it can’t be that, no, not at all, no’. started rubbing my breast with his hands above my sweater, he put his tongue in my mouth,” said Esther Romero, who did not file a complaint after the incident.
A “hypocrisy” of the Catholic Church
Initially, she confided in a friend who put her in touch with Abbé Pierre. “I believed that he was truly a saint, as Mother Teresa would say. So, ‘I’m going to keep quiet until he dies’. But I didn’t know how many people he had done it with,” he explains. -She. It was only 17 years later that Esther Romero decided to make her attack public, in 2007, after the death of Abbé Pierre. She then spoke in a Peruvian media and the information provoked no reaction.
“It’s hypocrisy on the part of the Catholic Church to hide this story for almost 70 years now, I know it,” she says. “For me, it’s a scandal and it’s good that it’s now known everywhere,” says the alleged victim.
24 women accuse Abbé Pierre of sexual assault and/or rape. Three people were minors at the time of the incident.