The Ombudsman collects that there were cases of sexual abuse within the Church of Lanzarote. This is stated in the report on sexual abuse in the scope of the Catholic Church and the role of public authorities A necessary response.
This document reported that there were cases of sexual abuse in 15 locations in the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife and 10 in the province of Las Palmas. "Each location does not necessarily imply a single aggressor and a single victim. In fact, there are educational centers (schools, seminaries) that include cases of several aggressors and with several victims in the same or different period of time, parishes with an aggressor and numerous victims," he highlights. Even an aggressor may have generated different locations by being transferred from religious centers.
In the previous legislature, in March 2022, the Congress of Deputies commissioned the Ombudsman, Ángel Gabilondo, to establish an independent Commission to prepare this report. In other countries, such as France or Portugal, these investigations were commissioned by national conferences of Catholic bishops. However, in Spain it was the newspaper El País who brought these cases to the fore in 2018.
The testimonies were collected between July 1, 2022 and October 9, 2023, through interviews conducted by the Victim Care Unit of the Ombudsman, the responses of the bishoprics, archdioceses and superiors of Catholic institutions and four dossiers delivered by the newspaper El País. The database published by that same newspaper collects that there are 1,532 accused and 2,735 victims.
In the 779 pages of the report, the Ombudsman states that "a singular aspect" has been revealed, since the victims are mostly men. In contrast, he recalls that sexual abuse in other environments, between 60% and 81% of the time, is committed against women.
The report states that sexual abuse against children was more frequent because males were "more exposed to contact with clerics potentially abusers in single-sex schools or in parishes", when called to act as "altar boys".
In many cases, there are other factors that expose certain children to a greater risk of being abused: their previous history of victimization or insufficient support in their family environment, the strong religiosity of the minor and their family. In addition, he denounces cases in which the abuser "takes advantage of the disability or other situations of vulnerability of the victim."
In addition, the investigation reveals that there were no "supervision and control mechanisms of the activity of the clerics" and the "deficient operation" of those that existed. Thus, it highlights "the cover-up by the bishoprics or other ecclesiastical authorities, with widespread practices." Among them, the accused clerics were transferred to other parishes, schools or other countries or the silence of the victims was bought.
As a result of this report, last April the Council of Ministers of the Government of Spain presented a Response and implementation Plan of the Ombudsman's report with the aim of "launching concrete measures" to settle "the existing debt with the victims", especially for those who could not continue with the criminal process due to the statute of limitations of the crimes or the death of the abuser.