Nearly 330,000 children were subjected to sex abuse in France’s Catholic Church over the last 70 years, according to a report released on Tuesday by an independent commission probing the scandal. The abuses were committed by some 3,000 priests and other people involved in the church — wrongdoing that Catholic authorities covered up over decades in a “systemic manner,” according to the president of the commission, Jean-Marc Sauvé.

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

“The head of the French bishops’ conference asked for forgiveness from the victims, about 80% of whom were boys,” according to the report. They are scheduled to meet on Tuesday for discussing next steps. 

“The consequences are very serious,” Sauvé said. “About 60% of men and women who were sexually abused encounter major problems in their emotional or sexual life.”

“We consider the church has a debt towards victims,” he added.

Francois Devaux, head of the La Parole Libérée (The Liberated Word), a group representing the victims, said the report was “a turning point in our history.”

“But even worse, there was a betrayal: betrayal of trust, betrayal of morality, betrayal of children, betrayal of innocence,” he said, asking the church to compensate the victims.

Olivier Savignac, the head of victims association Parler et Revivre, told The Associated Press that the high victim -abuser ratio was “terrifying for French society, for the Catholic Church.”

Savignac revealed he was abused at the age of 13 by the director of a Catholic vacation camp in the south of France. “I perceived this priest as someone who was good, a caring person who would not harm me,” Savignac said. “But it was when I found myself on that bed half-naked and he was touching me that I realized something was wrong….And we keep this, it’s like a growing cyst. It’s like gangrene inside the victim’s body and the victim’s psyche.”

The priest was found guilty in 2018 and sentenced to two years in prison, with one year suspended. 

The report says “an estimated 3,000 child abusers – two-thirds of them priests – worked in the church during the seven-decade period”. 

“Sometimes church officials did not denounce (sex abuses) and even exposed children to risks by putting them in contact with predators,” Sauvé said. “We consider … the church has a debt toward victims.”

The president of the Conference of Bishops of France, Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, said the bishops “are appalled” at the conclusions of the report.

“I wish on that day to ask for pardon, pardon to each of you,” he told the victims.

With Inputs from Associated Press