L’Arche Canada says changes made amid sex abuse scandal tied to founder Jean Vanier

An international charity that helps people with intellectual disabilities said it made changes as it tried to deal with revelations about its Canadian co-founder’s sexual abuse of women.

Lori Vaanholt, deputy executive director of L’Arche Canada, said the organization had implemented measures to ensure staff, volunteers and people with intellectual disabilities were protected from abuse in 2020, according to a first report released by the charity’s international office Jean Vanier concluded he had manipulative sexual relations with at least six women in France between 1975 and 1990.

A second report released Monday identified at least 25 women who were abused by Vanier between 1952 and his death in 2019, including in Canada and India. The report said Vanier’s relationships with the women are “part of a continuum of confusion, control and abuse.”

“When I first heard the information, one of the first things I tried to do was try to figure out how that could have happened within this organization and we didn’t know, and indeed we disappointed the women that it was abused,” Vaanholt said in an interview on Monday. “We didn’t see it, we didn’t stop it, it happened and we are deeply sorry.”

She said the organization was proactive in trying to uncover what happened and how it could improve its structures and practices.

Steps taken since 2020 have included audits of the 157 L’Arche communities in 37 countries – where people with intellectual disabilities live and work alongside people without intellectual disabilities – to assess existing practices to prevent abuse. Another audit will be conducted this year, with future audits planned every three years.

“This is an important part of our growth as an organization, and it continues and evolves, and that’s what we’re committed to,” she said.

The international organization and L’Arche’s Canadian branch have taken steps to improve whistleblowing and reporting procedures, she said.

While the report found no evidence that Vanier abused people with intellectual disabilities, Vaanholt said abuse education is now mandatory for people with disabilities to give them “the language … an understanding that they have choices, autonomy and rights, how they are treated.”

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But she concedes that it’s difficult to reconcile the organization’s good work with the disintegration of its founding myth. Vanier had said a “revelation” during a visit to a psychiatric facility prompted him to start the charity, although the new report actually concludes he used the charity as a screen for his sexual abuse.

“The very mission of L’Arche, which is when people across differences come together in friendly relationships where every person is valued and every person can be equal in those relationships – that’s real and literally hundreds of thousands of people around the world have experienced that.” “, she said.

L’Arche continues to operate 28 communities across Canada and has two “Projects” – potential communities that are being evaluated.

Madeline Burghardt, who teaches Disability Studies at Western University in London, Ontario, and York University, said the founding story and Vanier’s subsequent decision to invite two men with intellectual disabilities to live with him played a big part in L’Arche have played, particularly in the organization’s early decades.

“Jean was important. His teachings were important. His writings were important,” said Burghardt, who lived at a L’Arche community in Toronto for two years in the mid-1990s and served in a variety of roles with the organization over the following decade. “When he came to visit churches, it was a big deal … and yet this founding story that we thought we knew is different than what we thought, and it’s a horrifying story.”

Burghardt, who has not worked for L’Arche since 2008, said Monday’s report shows the organization needs to examine practices going back to its beginnings, including its lines of authority and reliance on its hierarchy.

At times, she said, people within the organization have spoken of being “appointed” to positions — using a religious term that can cause people to stop thinking critically.

While the organization has removed references to Vanier from its website from its library bookshelves, she said: “There’s this second layer, where the imprints of his model of authority remain, that we really need to delve deeper into, and the report has made that painfully clear.” “

It’s not just affecting people involved in L’Arche, she added. At least 10 schools in Yukon, Alberta, Ontario and Saskatchewan that were named after Vanier have changed their names since 2020.

“I think a lot of Canadians held Jean Vanier in high esteem, so for a lot of people it’s a reckoning with that legacy,” Burghardt said.

© 2023 The Canadian Press