Swiss voters are set to decide in a referendum whether to ban convicted paedophiles from working with minors.

 

"/> Swiss voters are set to decide in a referendum whether to ban convicted paedophiles from working with minors.

 

" />
Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

CHILDREN

Public to vote on paedophile ban

Swiss voters are set to decide in a referendum whether to ban convicted paedophiles from working with minors.

 

Published: 21 April 2011 11:43 CEST

A Swiss association has said it has collected over 100,000 signatures calling for a popular vote on whether to ban convicted paedophiles from working with children.

The White March (Marche Blanche) association, set up by a group of parents, said on its website that it had reached the minimum number of required signatures to force a national referendum on the issue. 

The group is calling for a life-time ban “for those who were convicted for having attacked the sexual integrity of a child or a dependent person.”

The group said that a convicted pedophile who has served a sentence is currently free to exercise a professional activity with minors, including being a sport coach or a teacher. 

“The vast majority of them are trustworthy. However, we know that those who are sexually attracted to children will go where they can satisfy their impulses,” the association said in a statement. “A paedophile who was convicted for sexually abusing a child should not be able to return to a place where he could again go after minors,” it said.

 

CATHOLIC CHURCH

At least 3,000 paedophiles active in French church since 1950: report

Thousands of paedophiles have operated inside the French Catholic Church since 1950, the head of an independent commission investigating the scandal told AFP, days ahead of the release of its report.

Published: 3 October 2021 09:16 CEST
French archbishop Cardinal Philippe Barbarin leads his last mass,on June 28, 2020. Barbarin was released on appeal on January 30 for his silence on the sexual abuse of a priest, and resigned quickly afterwards.
French archbishop Cardinal Philippe Barbarin leads his last mass,on June 28, 2020. Barbarin was released on appeal on January 30 for his silence on the sexual abuse of a priest, and resigned quickly afterwards. Photo: Jeff Pachoud/AFP

The commission’s research had uncovered between 2,900 and 3,200 paedophile priests or other members of the church, said Jean-Marc Sauve, adding that it was “a minimum estimate”.

The commission’s report is due to be released on Tuesday after two and a half years of research based on church, court and police archives, as well as interviews with witnesses.

The report, which Sauve said runs to 2,500 pages, will attempt to quantify both the number of offenders and the number of victims.

It will also look into “the mechanisms, notably institutional and cultural ones” within the Church which allowed paedophiles to remain, and will offer 45 proposals.

READ ALSO: 

The independent commission was set up in 2018 by the French Catholic Church in response to a number of scandals that shook the Church in France and worldwide.

Its formation also came after Pope Francis passed a landmark measure obliging those who know about sex abuse in the Catholic Church to report it to their superiors.

Made up of 22 legal professionals, doctors, historians, sociologists and theologians, its brief was to investigate allegations of child sex abuse by clerics dating back to the 1950s.

When it began its work it called for witness statements and set up a telephone hotline, then reported receiving thousands of messages in the months that followed.

SHOW COMMENTS