More than 200,000 minors have fallen victim to sexual abuse religious Catholics since 1940, This is evident from the first major independent report on this plague that was published on Friday in Spain, where the victims denounced the opacity of the Catholic Church for years.

The report does not give an exact figure, but includes a survey conducted at the request of the committee among a sample of 8,000 people, according to which 0.6% of Spain’s adult population (approximately 39 million people in total) claimed to have been sexually abused by members of the Catholic Church when they were minors.

This figure rises to 1.13% of the adult population Spanish (more than 400,000 people) when taking into account abuses committed by lay people in religious settingsspecified in a press conference Ángel Gabilondo, the Ombudsman, who coordinated the commission that worked for a year and a half.

Gabilondo, a former Socialist education minister, said there have been cases since the 1940s, but most occurred between 1970 and 1990.

In addition, the expert committee interviewed 487 victims of sexual abuse “the emotional problems” inflicted on them, such as post-traumatic stress, which a third of them suffered from, Gabilondo said.

For the Ombudsman, who on Friday officially handed over the more than 700-page report to the Spanish Congress, which commissioned it in March 2022, the text is a “response” to the “suffering and loneliness” of those affected.

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“Denial of Abuse”

Unlike what happened in France, Germany, Ireland, the United States or Australia Spain, land of roots Catholic traditionthe results of a study into pedophilia among the clergy were never published.

In France, 216,000 child victims have been registered since 1950, in Germany there have been 3,677 cases between 1946 and 2014 and in Ireland more than 14,500 people have received financial compensation.

In the Spanish Catholic Church, “unfortunately for many years a certain will to deny abuse or a will to hide or protect abusers has prevailed,” Gabilondo denounced.

Among the report’s recommendations is “the establishment of a state fund to pay compensation” to the victims, he added. The Catholic Church, which for years flatly refused any exhaustive investigation, refused to participate in the commission, although it eventually provided documents.

The Bishops’ Conference, which did not immediately respond to the report, convened an extraordinary meeting on Monday to adopt a position. As political pressure mounted, the Church announced its own audit in February 2022 and commissioned it to a law firm, which plans to complete it before the end of the year.

The Church defends itself by saying it has implemented action protocols against abuse and installed “small protection offices” in the dioceses.

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“Scape Valve”

The publication of the Ombudsman’s report was expected by victims. The document “is a public recognition that the situations (the abuses) exist,” José Alfonso Ruiz de Arcaute, who in 1982 reported sexual violence by a monk in a parish in Vitoria, Basque Country (north), told AFP. , when he was 13 years old.

“It represents an escape valve for the victims, because we have been totally ignored and minimized for decades and this report should serve as an incentive for the public powers to do their job” of restoring those affected, “since the Church does not did.” .”, Juan Cuatrecasas estimated in turn.

Cuatrecasas is one of the founders of the Stolen Childhood association and father of a young man who was abused by a teacher at a Catholic school in the Basque city of Bilbao between 2008 and 2010.

Stolen Childhood cooperated closely with the Ombudsman’s investigation, but not with the investigation ordered by the Church, which alleged that the law firm’s president, Javier Cremades, belongs to Opus Dei, a very conservative Catholic congregation.

Some victims asked whether the report released Friday would help Congress craft legislation to provide care and compensation to victims.

“All the pain they inflicted” cannot be solved “with words alone,” said Francisco Javier Méndez, who as a minor was abused by a priest at a seminary in León (Northwest) between 1988 and 1989 along with his late twin brother. I)