The Ombudsman, Ángel Gabilondo, delivered his report on sexual abuse in the Church to Congress this Friday, after receiving the assignment 19 months ago. The document, of more than 770 pages, which can be read here, states that 0.6% of the Spanish population (that is, more than 400,000 people) has suffered abuse by a religious or priest and criticizes “the disparate collaboration” of the bishops.
These 400,000 or 440,000 people, to be more exact, are deduced from a survey of people over 18 years of age (it must be taken into account that in Spain there are more than eight million minors). 0.6% of those surveyed acknowledged having suffered abuse from a priest or religious. But the percentage is almost double (1.13%) if abuses “in the religious sphere” are included, even if they were inflicted by lay people.
Whatever the final number is, “it is very significant,” Gabilondo acknowledged. And all these people demand “restorative justice, compensation, apologies, recognition of guilt,” which in turn makes it necessary for greater transparency and financing of a compensation fund by the Church, “which nothing would harm more than to remain silent on this matter because the biggest scandal would be not to collaborate.”
“It’s not true that everyone knew. Nor that anyone knew,” said Ángel Gabilondo, who calls for the creation of this state fund to compensate victims of pedophilia “in which it will be inevitable that the Catholic Church collaborates. And I think that at this point the Church should be aware of this.” The Defender also requested a public event to apologize to the victims and thus compensate them for so many years of silence.
The Episcopal Conference refused to participate in the advisory commission promoted by Ángel Gabilondo, although it promised to provide whatever information they requested. This collaboration is actually an obligation, which not everyone has fulfilled. “Some bishop has even scolded us and asked us why we were messing around.” Ángel Gabilondo’s conclusions come more than a year and a half after receiving the assignment from all parliamentary groups, except Vox.
During this time, the Church commissioned its own audit from the Cremades law firm, which plans to present its conclusions shortly. Ahead of both its own audit and that of Ángel Gabilondo, the Church presented a 2,000-page report last March. Their document collected the testimonies of 927 victims who came to their offices to report cases of pedophilia and sexual abuse.
Gabilondo’s appearance disappointed those who expected an exact number of victims. The institution recognized that it addressed all dioceses and all congregations. “They gave us some figures, which added up to 1,430 victims.” But then the Defender addressed the Episcopal Conference, which, using the same sources, counted “400 fewer victims.”
Along this path “we will not get very far,” said Gabilondo, who referred to the survey he commissioned and in which 8,000 people over 18 years of age were interviewed. According to this survey, 11.7% of those surveyed acknowledged having been victims of sexual abuse before reaching the age of majority. 3.36 of these victims suffered abuse in the family environment. And 1.13%, “in the religious sphere.”
Of that 1.13%, 0.6% recognized that the abuser was “a religious person or a priest.” The extrapolation of “that representative sample of the Spanish population” (these are the words of the Ombudsman himself) results in about 440,000 people. “The matter is serious,” said the defendant. Numbers and percentages, however, do not illustrate the real dimension of the problem or “the suffering and loneliness of the victims.”
This helplessness is aggravated “by an unfair silence, that of those who could have done more.” The victims can’t wait any longer. They need to “be listened to, attended to and reciprocated.” A total of 487 people (“does that mean that’s all of them? No!”) have gone to the attention units of the Ombudsman, who insisted that the real extent of the problem will never be known. 84% of the complainants were men.
Why not? For many reasons. Due to “the inaccessibility of certain files”, “the voluntary silence” of some of the people who suffered abuse and the passage of time, which has allowed some to have already died. For this reason, the report insists that repairing the damage cannot be postponed any longer. The report (“we are not judges or legislators”) does not say how to do it, but it does give advice and show the way.
The impact of the abuses was “devastating” and a necessary response from the Church is urgently needed, from which “exemplarity” can be expected. That response, despite this, has in many cases been “insufficient and dilatory.” Victims have rarely been adequately cared for and have been excluded from “the procedures of canon law.” The recent steps of the Episcopal Conference are progress, “but insufficient.”
The Ombudsman was a religious and teacher between 1966 and 1979 in two Sacred Heart centers, in Vitoria and Madrid. It so happens that there are complaints of clerical pedophilia against other teachers at both schools during the same period in which he was a teacher and shared the faculty with those alleged sexual predators whom he is now investigating. That aroused misgivings among the victims.
But the response of the institution he heads has been forceful when it comes to criticizing “the loneliness, secrecy and indifference” of the Church towards people who suffered so much damage, and who present high rates of post-traumatic stress, suicidal ideations and low self-esteem. . At times, he added, they were revictimized and made to feel guilty for what had happened. But that wasn’t the only thing that happened…
It was well known, but never had an institution as representative as the Ombudsman said it so clearly and forcefully. “For years, the Catholic Church hid these behaviors and covered them up, transferring the culprits to other churches and parishes. This was a repeated malpractice in many ecclesiastical institutions”, which now makes reparation necessary for crimes already prescribed.
The attitude of the ecclesiastical hierarchy has changed today, although some bishops have allowed themselves the freedom to even “scold” the Ombudsman (“although the truth is, we allow ourselves to be scolded little”), but such changes are not enough. And they are not, the document maintains, because they focus more on prevention than “on repair or clarification of what has happened, with attitudes that should be more intense.”
Furthermore, the sentences against the few pedophiles who reached criminal justice did not always guarantee “the economic compensation to which their abusers were entitled, not even in the minority of cases in which the subsidiary civil liability of the Church was declared.” Recent laws, such as that on the protection of children and adolescents, have also not had an impact on compensation for “lack of resources.”
