The spokesperson in the islands of the National Association Stolen Childhood, Ciro Molina, said on Tuesday that the Church in the Canary Islands should make a public act of reparation to the victims of pedophilia, and assume its civil responsibility for these events, since the criminal one has prescribed.
This is how the spokesperson of the aforementioned association expressed himself in an appearance in the regional Parliament to talk about the improvement of child protection mechanisms, who has defined himself as a "victim and survivor" of sexual abuse by a priest from Tenerife in 1997, when Ciro Molina was 9 years old.
He denounced these events in 2004 and the only response he received from the Church was to transfer the priest from the parish, who allegedly had also abused children previously in Vallehermoso (La Gomera), while Ciro Molina's family suffered "social terrorism" in their locality.
"We are facing a problem of extreme gravity, a real shame and a social scourge that affects boys and girls, also adolescents, which causes damage to their inner self and to a personality to be configured with a devastating destruction that inevitably causes psychological, behavioral and physical problems," Molina warned.
The spokesperson has referred to the victims of abuse in any area, not only by ecclesiastics, who have not been heard or believed, and who have suffered stigmatization and sought refuge in drugs, or who have died without verbalizing the monstrosity they have suffered or seeing their suffering repaired, or justice done.
"No one is exempt from being a pedophile, and anyone can be a victim or an aggressor," said Ciro Molina, who has appealed that it is time for the perpetrators to feel ashamed of their attitude since their abuse of power is based "on the complicity and silence" of others.
And also the social reproach must go through not giving recognition to the perpetrators or those who cover up these events because, Ciro Molina lamented, despite putting his case to the attention of the justice system, the bishop of Tenerife, Bernardo Álvarez, recently retired, did not make any decision and continued to receive public recognition with the excuse "of the protocol".
"No, gentlemen, we cannot continue to give honors and distinctions to perpetrators or cover-ups," he reproached before the parliamentarians, to whom he said that they need measures that materialize in an autonomous project of aid to the victims with adequate financing.
Otherwise, his appearance will only be reduced to a "thank you for coming and a pat on the back", Ciro Molina indicated, to demand action protocols and support programs for children to not act only when the damage is done, but to train professionals and children in prevention and create safe environments and support networks in families and educational centers.
He has also requested a statute for victims of sexual violence so that they can have psychological and legal support and know what resources they should go to, because the response they have been given has not been adequate, the system has failed "and the sad thing is that it has to get to this point".
In his opinion, the important thing is to create an observatory, an entity that centralizes all the issues in this area because the problem of the Canary Islands is that it has "seven singularities" and that is not the way to address this issue.
He has also proposed that the Parliament of the Canary Islands organize informative conferences on these events together with the two public universities of the archipelago, and has also stressed that the reparation requested by the victims is not "a whim, but something mandated by Europe".
In his opinion, the Church is doing it "a little wrong" and should collaborate with public institutions because in the end some victims are being repaired and others are not, and although in communities such as Navarra and the Basque Country "they have put the batteries", the Episcopal Conference continues to deny the facts and interprets them as an attack on the Church.
In this regard, Ciro Molina has insisted on remembering "the culture of silence" that accompanies these events and how, after filing the complaint, "all doors were closed" to his mother.
But the important thing, he continued, is to determine what can be done so that children and adolescents are protected or at least do not feel alone and in this regard "it would be cool", he said, that the Parliament of the Canary Islands, which was one of the first to deal with issues related to stolen babies, was a "leading institution so that our childhood is protected".
