How France’s Jimmy Savile also got away with his evil

This week nine more charges of sexual abuse were levelled against Abbé Pierre, the late French Roman Catholic priest who for decades was regarded as a modern-day saint.

This brings to 33 the number of charges, ranging from sexual assault to the rape of a boy, all alleged to have been committed between the 1960s and shortly before the priest’s death in 2007 at the age of 94. Among the latest complainants are a woman now 58, who detailed how she was assaulted by Abbé Pierre exactly fifty years ago. ‘Several times I’ve wanted to shout to the world that this man isn’t who he says he is,’ the woman said in an interview this week. ‘But who would have believed me? People weren’t ready to hear that about Abbé Pierre.’

The priest – whose real name was Henri Grouès – is reported to have been a voracious sexual predator, who indulged his perversion around the world in hotels, hospitals, airplanes, youth camps and when was engaged on humanitarian missions.