PROBE ESTIMATE SHOWS SPANISH CLERGY SEXUALLY ABUSED OVER 200,000 CHILDREN
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Agency Report
An impartial committee released on Friday concluded that since 1940, the Roman Catholic clergy in Spain had sexually molested over 200,000 kids.
Although a precise number was not provided, the research stated that 0.6 percent of Spain’s adult population, which is estimated to be over 39 million, reported having been sexually abused as children by members of the clergy.
At a press conference held to reveal the results of the report, which spans more than 700 pages, Spain’s national ombudsman, Angel Gabilondo, stated that the figure increases to 1.13 percent, or over 400,000 people, when abuse by ordinary members is taken into account.
After several global scandals involving child sexual abuse over the past 20 years, the newest to rattle the Roman Catholic Church are the discoveries from Spain.
In addition, 487 victims were examined by the panel, and according to Gabilondo, they emphasised “the emotional problems” the assault had caused them.
“There are people who have (died by) suicide… people who have never put their lives back together,” the former Socialist education minister said.
Teresa Conde, a philosophy teacher who was abused for years by a friar starting at the age of 14 when she attended a religious school in the northwestern city of Salamanca in early 1980, said she is “never going to be a normal person.”
“I’m never going to stop doing therapy or taking medicine,” the 57-year-old told AFP.
‘Downplay The Issue’
Unlike in other nations, in Spain — a traditionally Catholic country that has become highly secular — clerical abuse allegations only recently started to gain traction, leading to accusations by survivors of stonewalling.
The report is critical of the response of the Catholic Church, saying “it has long been characterised by denial and attempts to downplay the issue.” It recommended the creation of a state fund to pay reparations to victims.
“Unfortunately, for many years there has been a certain desire to deny abuses or a desire to conceal or protect the abusers,” said Gabilondo.
In March 2022, the Spanish parliament decisively decided to establish an impartial commission headed by the ombudsman of the nation to investigate cases of abuse by clergy.
The nation’s Catholic Church, which had steadfastly refused for years to conduct its own investigation, cooperated with the investigation by offering records on sexual abuse cases gathered by dioceses but otherwise declined to participate.
However, as political pressure grew, it assigned a private law company an “audit” of past and current sexual abuse by clergy, teachers, and other Church-affiliated individuals in February 2022, with the expectation that it would be finished by the end of the year.
The Spanish church has also set up protocols for dealing with sexual abuse and has set up “child protection” offices within dioceses.
Contacted by AFP, the Spanish bishops’ conference said it would react to the commission’s report on Monday at an extraordinary meeting.
‘Slightly Better Country’
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said the release of the report was a “milestone” in the country’s democratic history.
“Today we are a slightly better country, because a reality that everyone was for years aware of but no one talked about, has been made known,” the Socialist premier told reporters in Brussels.
Juan Cuatrecasas, a founding member of the “Infancia Robada” (Stolen Childhood) victims’ association and the father of a youth who was abused by a teacher at a Catholic school in Bilbao, said lawmakers now must ensure repairs are made.
“This must be the start of something, not an end in itself,” he told AFP.
The Roman Catholic Church’s abuse crisis exploded onto the international stage in 2002 when the Boston Globe newspaper revealed priests had sexually abused children for decades and church leaders had covered it up.
Patterns of widespread abuse of children were later reported across the United States and Europe, in Chile and Australia, undercutting the moral authority of the 1.3 billion-member Church and taking a toll on its membership.
An independent commission in France for example concluded in 2021 that some 216,000 children — mostly boys — had been sexually abused by clergy since 1950.
AFP
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