The Ombudsman, Ángel Gabilondo, presented this Thursday in the Plenary of the Congress of Deputies the Report on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and the role of public authorities and urged the Legislative and the Executive to implement the recommendations contained in the Report as soon as possible because “the victims expect a concrete response to their situation and that it is not postponed”, he assured.
The debate on the Ombudsman's Report in the Plenary of the Congress culminates the fulfillment of the mandate received by the Congress of Deputies on March 10, 2022 -after the approval of a Non-Law Proposal (PNL) that had the vote in favor of the majority of the political groups of the Lower House- and a little more than a year after the report was delivered to the President of the Cortes Generales, Francina Armengol, and the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez.
During his speech in Congress, the Ombudsman recalled that the work to carry out the Report was developed in three areas of action: an Advisory Commission -composed of experts in various disciplines-, a Victim Assistance Unit and an Associations Forum.
The testimonies of the victims
He also stressed that the Report draws on the testimonies of the victims and “responds to what the victims of sexual abuse have been requesting: to begin with, to be heard, attended to and reciprocated”.
Thus, he pointed out that through the testimonies collected by the Victim Assistance Unit, it has been possible to have express knowledge of a total of 674 victims of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. Of all of them, the Ombudsman pointed out that 563 were men, 84.19%, and 110 women, 15.61%. The vast majority were between 30 and 75 years old at the time of the interview, with the most numerous age group being between 50 and 65 years old, with 186 victims, 39%.
According to Ángel Gabilondo, the testimonies collected “have spoken of cognitive damage, spiritual damage, difficulties in affective and sexual life and in the relationship with their own children, of the impact it has had on the rest of the family, who by extension have often suffered all their lives because of it. Even job expectations have been negatively affected in many cases.” And he stressed that “reparation to the victims must be put before any other ideological or belief difference”
In his presentation, the Ombudsman referred to the survey -commissioned to GAD3 after a public bidding process- “to frame the dimensions of the problem and set the incidence of sexual abuse in any area of Spanish society, in addition to the religious one”.
The survey includes a significant methodological and numerical sample of the Spanish population: 8,013 people and reveals, among other things, that 11.7% of the people interviewed say they have suffered sexual abuse before the age of 18. 3.36% state that this abuse occurred in the family environment. The survey also concludes that 0.6% of the representative sample of the population surveyed has been sexually assaulted by a Catholic priest or religious, and that in 1.13% the assault was recorded in the religious sphere.
Twenty recommendations
The Ombudsman has broken down some of the 24 recommendations contained in the Report and which are addressed “to the Legislative, the Executive, all public authorities, the Church and the Spanish society itself”. All these recommendations respond, in his opinion, to the need to “respond to a situation of suffering and loneliness that for years has been kept in one way or another covered by an unjust silence”.
The Ombudsman demands, at this point, coordination and collaboration between Church and State for the implementation of the measures. “I consider it essential that, for the good of the victims, Church and State adopt joint commitments”.
Among the recommendations are to hold a public act of recognition and symbolic reparation to the victims for the prolonged period of neglect and inactivity, in particular between 1970 and 2020. The creation of a state fund for the payment of compensation to the victims and that a special administrative body -created for the occasion- be the one to establish a procedure for the recognition and reparation of victims of child sexual assault or abuse in the Catholic Church.
The report also recommends various regulatory reforms for the clarification and reparation of what happened, and, to prevent similar events, that the Catholic Church provide the necessary means to help victims of sexual abuse in the recovery process, offering treatment to victims or family members when required. And that dioceses and institutes of consecrated life open the information contained in their archives to researchers. (All the recommendations, in full, can be consulted in Part VIII Chapter 2 of the Report).
After considering that “the silence has been broken, although for the victims it is in a late manner”, Ángel Gabilondo has attributed this break, “to the effort of the victims, to the contribution of the media, and to those who from different areas have accompanied their itineraries of life and their claims”.
And he remarked that what can be contributed by this work prepared by a public institution and that we debate today will also contribute to breaking that silence, and of course it will be largely due to the response of the members of the Cortes Generales.”
