Introduction

In February 2020, a report by UK-based consulting group GCPS revealed that Jean Vanier, the much-heralded founder of L'Arche, an international network of communities that supports people labelled with an intellectual disability, had sexually abused six women in his home community of Trosly-Breuil, France. 2 The report and its fallout received widespread attention in online and published news outlets and initiated a painful introspective process within L'Arche to re-examine its history and founder. 3 Much of this initial analysis concerned individual and public grappling with Vanier's significant fall from grace. Vanier had been considered a hero by many and had even been heralded as a saint within some religious communities, even before his death in 2019 (Spink, 2006; Whitney-Brown, 2019). The initial emotional response to the scandal has since broadened to include examinations regarding how this story aligns with other examples of abuse perpetrated by men in powerful positions (Burghardt, 2020), of the relationships Vanier had with key individuals that contributed to its occurrence and secrecy over decades (L'Arche International, Summary Report, 2023, hereafter L'Arche, Summary Report), and the role of other parties such as The Vatican (MacDonald, 2020). While important, these analyses have tended to focus on Vanier and his wrongdoings as well as those from within his inner circle. What remains to be considered are the conditions that gave rise to such abuse as well as subsequent implications on care with people with intellectual disabilities. My goals in this paper are to examine the conditions and discourses particular to L'Arche that, while framed as anti-institutional and centred on mutuality, fostered an environment where abuse was possible, and to consider what this story reveals about the ways in which people with intellectual disabilities are understood, supported and cared for. To those ends, I ask: What features of institutionalized care remained within L'Arche practices, at least in its oldest and most revered community, that might have allowed this to happen? Further, what does the public's response to this story tell us about ongoing understandings of care with and for people with intellectual disabilities, and what are the lessons that can be carried forward?

To do this, I engage the work of critical disability studies scholars who have theorized care and violence within caregiving settings (Chapman, 2014; Rossiter & Rinaldi, 2018). Specifically, I draw from the notion that care and violence are not two opposing phenomena but are, rather, coexistent entities on the same discursive and practical axis, and that certain historical and social conditions allow violence to be materialized and justified. In addition, I draw from current critical interdisciplinary scholarship that lays to rest the outdated notion of 'care-as-heroism' and instead articulates care as part of the necessary and shared work toward disability justice (Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, 2018; Nedelsky & Malleson, 2023).

Before going further, I wish to clarify my use of the term violence. In alignment with feminist scholarship, it is my stance that the non-consensual sexual abuse that Vanier committed was a form of violence (Lombard & McMillan, 2013), although L'Arche's international overseeing body has not defined it as such. And from the outset, I am aware that my engagement with Chapman's (2014) theorizations regarding the historical use of violence to achieve colonial and political goals, and Rossiter & Rinaldi's (2018) theorizations of violence against vulnerable people in care settings might be considered inapplicable due to this story's narrow historical scope and the presumption that those abused were not residents but caregivers, respectively. 4 Despite these imperfect alignments, I contend that the care/violence spectrum is a useful tool with which to grapple with this story due to the inherent intimacy that caregiving engenders and the resultant potential for exploitation.

In engaging these frames, I acknowledge that L'Arche presents a particular conundrum. Before the report's initial release in 2020, L'Arche had been held in high universal esteem by those involved in the care of disabled people, and it is difficult to reconcile knowledge of L'Arche's intentional, caring communities with the allegations of sexual violence that have been levelled against its founder. L'Arche developed as a counter-culture alternative to total institutions, offering a model of care that focuses on shared mutuality, on the gifts that each person brings to their relationships and communities, non-violence, and benevolence. To be clear, L'Arche communities around the world continue to provide safe homes centred on lifesharing and the radical acceptance of all persons. 5 My aim here is not to dispute L'Arche's model or homes, but to consider how, even in ostensibly safe and non-institutional settings, threads of institutionalized care can carry on, and even benevolent discourse can act as a tool for the perpetuation of violence, often in hidden ways.

This discussion consists of three parts. First, I provide a condensed version of the historical backdrop of the Vanier scandal, the events leading up to it, and its immediate implications. In the second section, I examine some of the principal features and discourses of L'Arche, ways of doing and speaking that have built up its symbolic architecture over time, and consider them anew against the backdrop of the abuse and its decades-long suppression. These include L'Arche's ways of defining and practicing community, its hierarchical structure and reverence for a charismatic leader, its original isolation from the broader community, and the language used to depict people with intellectual disabilities. I discuss how L'Arche's rhetoric of vulnerability and the use of the vulnerable "other" as a means toward spiritual communion and enlightenment contributed to an environment in which exploitation and sexual violence became possible. The third section is a discussion of the implications of these considerations on care with and for disabled people moving forward. Ultimately, this story illuminates more than the misconduct of one person and the failure of a community to catch it. The shock and disappointment with which this story has been met reveals a great deal about how non-disabled people view people with intellectual disabilities and what it means to support them.

The Findings, the Fallout, and the Work Left Behind

L'Arche was founded in France in 1964 by Jean Vanier, then a thirty-six-year-old Canadian academic who had been living in France for most of the previous decade, much of that time at L'Eau Vive, a Catholic theological training centre and "school of wisdom" founded by French Dominican priest Père Thomas Phillippe (Spink, 2006). According to L'Arche's founding story, Thomas Phillipe, acting as Vanier's mentor and spiritual guide, encouraged Vanier to consider working amongst people with disabilities in the area in which they were living. He encouraged Vanier to invite residents of a local institution for people with intellectual disabilities to come and live with him in his small, simple home in the village of Trosly-Breuil. 6 Vanier's stated goal was to live in mutuality and simplicity with the men, sharing in daily life tasks and rituals in which the men had not been able to participate while institutionalized. Word of this unusual arrangement spread, and within a few years the household had grown to encompass several houses in Trosly-Breuil and surrounding villages, with several more "core members" and the assistants who had come to live with them (Spink, 2006). 7 In the sixty years since its founding, L'Arche has become an international federation of homes for people with intellectual disabilities, consisting of 154 communities in thirty-eight countries, 8 known for its high level of care, low assistant-core member ratio, and emphasis on building mutual relationships. This simple yet captivating story became the cornerstone of L'Arche history, a narrative frequently turned to within L'Arche circles and beyond to illustrate the far-reaching effects of one person's decision to devote himself to what was perceived by many as a transformative act of social justice.

Interpretations of this story have shifted significantly due to the findings of the GCPS and L'Arche Summary Reports. They reveal that, over several decades, Vanier engaged in non-consensual sexual practices with female assistants who lived and worked in the L'Arche Trosly-Breuil community. Vanier had coerced women using the rhetoric of intimacy as an expression of a mystical spiritual bond through which they would draw closer to Jesus (L'Arche, Summary Report, 2023). Not unlike other abusive situations, the women all described themselves as being in a state of vulnerability at the time and were afraid to speak publicly owing Vanier's convincing presence as a spiritual leader, his coercive tactics and demand for secrecy, and his prominent position within L'Arche. Accounts from the women date from the 1970s until 2005, indicating that Vanier was adept at hiding his actions, that his victims felt unable to reveal what was happening, and that others who may have suspected also felt unable or unwilling to come forward.

Importantly, the report also reveals that Vanier's actions at Trosly-Breuil were a historical continuation of ritualistic sexual practices that he, Thomas Phillipe and a small group of adherents, including women, had engaged in at the L'Eau Vive community beginning as far back as the late 1940s. Thomas Phillipe, the spiritual leader of L'Eau Vive, had developed a theology based on his professed "mystical union with Mary" that included "sexual practices with nuns or young lay women aspiring to a religious vocation" (L'Arche, Summary Report, p. 11). Gradual revelations of these activities, including reports made by two women to Thomas Phillipe's superiors in 1951, led to a Vatican-led investigation and his removal from L'Eau Vive in April 1952. He was relocated to various places in France and eventually to Rome in an attempt to isolate him from his followers. In 1956, a Vatican-led trial resulted in a sentence that barred Thomas Phillipe from carrying out ministerial responsibilities and from communicating with his disciples. The L'Eau Vive community was shut down the same year.

Despite these rulings, Vanier and other members of L'Eau Vive managed to remain in close contact with Thomas Phillipe between the community's closure in 1956 and the opening of L'Arche in 1964. Indeed, rather than this being a fallow period in the group's history, the years 1956-64 represent a time of "intensification of an underground culture" (L'Arche, Summary Report, p. 28), accomplished primarily via hundreds of clandestine letters that reveal the group's determination to continue the practices they had started. Significantly, followers and supporters of Thomas Philippe facilitated his return to ministry by assisting him in moving to Trosly-Breuil in 1963, shortly before Vanier decided to settle there and to begin his work with local people with intellectual disabilities. From the beginning, and despite the Vatican's earlier ruling, Vanier welcomed Thomas Philippe's ministerial role, first with himself and the men he had invited into his home, and later within the larger L'Arche community as it grew. According to Hoyeau (2021), the Dominicans and the Vatican did not intervene, in part owing the men's ability to attract young people to a revitalized version of Catholicism which focused on the celebration of faith and personal relationships with God (San Martin, 2021).

Perhaps most troubling is the report's finding that the establishment of L'Arche cannot be neatly disentangled from Vanier's abusive actions (L'Arche, Summary Report, pp. 254-281). This counters the conviction espoused by many former admirers of Vanier, at least in the immediate aftermath of the report, that in spite of his misdeeds, Vanier still did good by establishing homes and communities for disabled people and by advocating for an ethos of mutuality (Dulle, 2020; Wrigley-Carr, 2021). The report's revelation that the original L'Arche homes were not distinct from but were, rather, part of a plan that facilitated and provided cover for Thomas Phillipe's, Vanier's and their adherents' mystical sect and its underground culture complicates this interpretation. To many of L'Arche's followers, this has been the most difficult piece of the story: that its beloved homes and communities did not necessarily emerge from a place of generosity in a flawed person, but were rather part of a purposeful plan to support and obfuscate a web of strange, secretive, and abusive practices (Brock, 2023; L'Arche, Summary Report, 2023).

The report's findings have had significant implications both within L'Arche and in the broader Canadian social landscape. 9 Long-term community members have experienced a deep sense of betrayal from the leader they had trusted and revered, a man who acted in complete contradiction to his fundamental teachings of mutuality and respect and had actively denied his complicity, even when asked about his knowledge of Thomas Phillipe's actions on at least two occasions before his death (L'Arche, Summary Report, 2023; Hoyeau, 2021). Vanier spoke often of the ubiquitous brokenness that connects all humanity and of the need to share our vulnerability mutually and transparently in order to become more accepting of ourselves and others. While these sentiments are inspiring in theory, the women's accounts indicate that Vanier used the notion of shared vulnerability as a tool of coercion in situations marked by significant power differentials, ones in which people's lived experiences of vulnerability cannot be defined as mutual. Moreover, this sense of betrayal is irresolvable given Vanier's death. Vanier died while still denying knowledge of or involvement with Thomas Phillip's actions, and his death means that he will never be held to account. Indeed, it is the people remaining who have had to pick up the pieces and determine L'Arche's way forward, a one-sided effort without the person who instigated the need for this painful process in the first place. In a way that would have been unimaginable to L'Arche devotees a decade ago, Vanier now joins the long parade of once-respected historical figures whose legacy is being re-written.

Finally, the findings have shaken L'Arche at a fundamental level. Communities have stripped their websites and libraries of Vanier's image and writings, and members have been forced to consider if anything positive can or should remain from his legacy. L'Arche has committed to 're-read' its history and founder, a difficult task in light of the extent to which L'Arche relied on its founding story as a model of inspiration (Posner & Cates-Carney, 2020). L'Arche has also undertaken this historical examination to better understand how abuse occurring within their walls was perpetrated and unreported for so long, and to determine if there were signs missed or calls for help ignored that might have prevented harm from happening had they been heeded (Brock, 2023; L'Arche, Summary Report., 2023).

The foregoing section provides a brief summary of the strange history that was part of L'Arche's founding, a network of abusive rites and relationships that for the most part remained hidden and unknown. While understanding this history is important insofar as it sheds light on key people, their motivations, and the failures of people in authority, it is important that analysis moves beyond Vanier and the story's unpleasant details. In stating this, I am not absolving Vanier of his individual actions and responsibilities, nor of the trauma he inflicted upon his victims. My intent, rather, is to consider what can be learned more broadly from this story, particularly regarding its implications regarding care for people with intellectual disabilities. What does this story, and the reaction to it, tell us about the ways in which non-disabled people view the care of people with disabilities, and accordingly, about society's views of disabled people more generally? To do this, I consider how L'Arche's discourse—what I call here its 'symbolic architecture' –might have contributed to abuse being perpetrated and hidden within the context of a caring community.

L'Arche's Symbolic Architecture: Community, Spirituality, the Body

Discussion

I now return to the questions I posed at the beginning: what features of institutionalized care remained within L'Arche practices that might have allowed this to happen, and what can be learned from this story about care with and for people with intellectual disabilities, including its implications moving forward? As discussed above, there are features of L'Arche's founding and its ongoing practice and discourse that made the perpetration of abuse possible: its hierarchical nature and reverence for a singular leader, religious rhetoric that emphasized the importance of vulnerability, including vulnerability of the body, in the journey toward spiritual healing and communion with others, and its early isolation from the surrounding community. And while the abuse that happened in L'Arche purportedly did not happen to residents, its founding community was nonetheless a place where abuse was "woven into… [its historical] fabric" (Rossiter and Rinaldi, 2018, p. 76, fn 6), of concern when one considers that this was the same place that people with disabilities call home.

This story illuminates the continuum of care and violence that disability studies scholars have described as an inevitable feature of caregiving settings and all caregiving relationships, one that requires constant vigilance. As Chapman (2014) notes, the paradoxical relationship between care and violence is not an aberration, but is rather, a historically persistent and mutually-reinforcing feature of the supervision and management of marginalized people. This intersection is typically informed by the logic of "political rationalities" (pp. 25-44) grounded in moral reasoning and religious doctrine which, over time, has justified violence against 'othered' populations to further goals of colonization, subjugation, and progress. Although what happened here does not align perfectly with Chapman's broad historical scope, they and other scholars (see, for example, Ben-Moshe, 2011), note that it is not unreasonable to reflect on the extent to which the care currently provided to people with disabilities and other vulnerable groups is a continuation, albeit in a less visibly violent form, of historically oppressive arrangements that are rationalized as acts of compassion. As long as community living arrangements incorporate any of the threads that have historically informed more blatant forms of incarceration, even when euphemistically re-labelled, violence is possible (Rossiter & Rinaldi, 2018, p. 25).

L'Arche, despite its solid reputation, and despite having discursively and practically positioned itself outside of this historical continuum of care and violence, is still located within this larger historical narrative and cannot consider itself immune to the conditions that make violence possible. This story is a reminder that nothing, neither inspiring storylines nor charismatic founders, positions us outside of history. Indeed, the attention given to Vanier and his 'selfless' first step may have ultimately been a distraction to the reality that L'Arche was as susceptible as any other community to overarching moral reasonings that have been reiterated throughout history. Moreover, as Rossiter and Rinaldi (2018) point out, due to the proximity and intimacy that caregiving necessitates, no caregiving community can thoroughly remove itself from this possibility. As long as daily attention to residents' bodies is part of the care given, so, too, is violence possible.

Further, although this scandal is ostensibly about sexual assault committed by a trusted leader, it also reveals a great deal about the ways in which non-disabled people continue to perceive people with intellectual disabilities and the supports they need to live a good life. The public's disappointment in Vanier and their shock and sadness at seeing a hero in disgrace reflects the height of the pedestal upon which he had been placed. His 'fall' reveals how extraordinary he and his work were understood to be, including the notion that providing homes and care for people with intellectual disabilities is also extraordinary and difficult.

Notwithstanding that his was a counter-cultural and counter-generational move, Vanier was considered exceptional by many because he was a man who had undertaken care of people with intellectual disabilities, and he had done so with other options at his disposal.

Vanier enjoyed immense privilege before initiating L'Arche (Whitney-Brown, 2019). A white, well-educated man from a prominent Canadian family, he had the social and financial means from which he could initiate his unique living arrangement, and he could have abandoned the project at any point should it have proven too difficult without serious repercussions to his personal life or the ability to support himself. While his founding of L'Arche could be read as a willingness to eschew these benefits, thus intimating self-sacrifice, it is precisely this background privilege that makes his decision appear noteworthy. Being wealthy, white, and male fostered the impression that this was indeed an exceptional person making an extraordinary move, further shoring up the idea that living with and caring for people with intellectual disabilities is a sacrifice that is best left to exceptional people.

Critical disability and social work scholars are increasingly countering the notion of the exceptionality of care and are highlighting instead the need to share the unremarkable yet essential work of being present to each other even when it is difficult to do so (Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, 2018; Nedelsky & Malleson, 2023). To the thousands of parents who, over time, have chosen not to institutionalize their children but to raise them at home, often without support, the depiction of Vanier as a saint might seem bizarre and unfair: this is the work that parents have done and continue to do every day, without accolades or attention. Nedelsky and Malleson (2023) propose alternatives to the heroism that has inflected caregiving in Western cultures in recent decades: broader acceptance of shared caring and the transformation of gendered roles that continue to be normalized in caregiving. The latter in particular is one strategy that can help to dismantle the ideas that informed Vanier's heroism.

For care to be considered less remarkable—for caregivers to be recognized not as saints but as people who need support in order to continue the work they are doing, and for people with disabilities not to be seen as burdens in need of heroes—support networks must themselves be supported. As long as governments minimize supports for caregivers, financial and otherwise; as long as policies make it difficult for care to become communal as opposed to individualistic; and until disability is considered a regular feature of diverse communities rather than an exceptional situation, then the work will remain heroic, and the receivers of care will continue to be understood as the reason why heroism is needed.

Concluding Remarks

Rossiter and Rinaldi (2018) point out the need for multi-layered analyses in order to understand the motives and manifestations of institutional violence. Neither individualistic ("bad apple") nor broad systemic analyses are wholly sufficient, and they rightly note the influence of organizational, or inter-institutional (or, in this case, inter-community) factors that can lead to the creation of harmful milieux (p. 24). To this analysis, I add the persistent tropes of persons with intellectual disabilities as challenging and their caregivers as exceptional. In addition to the dangers of isolation and devotion to a singular leader, of religious rhetoric in the framing of communities and the people it is meant to serve, of hierarchy and unchallenged authority, is the danger of remaining stuck in outdated and unhelpful interpretations of people with intellectual disabilities and what it means to support them.

Prior to Vanier's death, L'Arche communities prepared themselves to carry on its mission without its popular founder. The complicated public relations and healing journey on which it finds it finds itself today is not where L'Arche predicted or wished it would be. In the years since the revelations against its founder have surfaced, L'Arche has publicly demonstrated a dedication to addressing its history. Beyond rereading and interrogating its founding story, the task ahead includes an acknowledgement of its unexceptionality in the larger context of caregiving settings, where both care and violence hover close to the surface, and where the need for ongoing vigilance against discourses that allow violence to surface remains.