Spain’s first official probe of sex abuse by clergy members or other people connected to the Catholic Church within the country included a survey that indicated that the variety of victims could run into lots of of 1000’s.
The survey was a part of a damning report by the office of Spain’s ombudsman, or “defensor del pueblo,” following an 18-month independent investigation of 487 cases involving alleged victims who spoke with the ombudsman’s team.
Ombudsman Ángel Gabilondo criticized the church’s response to sex abuse scandals, saying it had often been to attenuate if not deny the issue. He presented the nearly 800-page report back to the speaker of the Spanish parliament’s lower house Friday after which to reporters.
“This is a needed report to answer a situation of suffering and loneliness that for years has remained, in a technique or one other, covered by an unfair silence,” Gabilondo said in a press release,
He acknowledged that the church had taken steps to deal with each abuse by priests and efforts to cover up the scandal, but said they weren’t enough.
Included within the report were findings from a survey based on 8,000 valid phone and online responses. The poll said 1.13% of the Spanish adults questioned said they were abused as children by either priests or lay members of the church, including teachers at religious schools. Of those, 0.6% identified their abusers as clergy members.
Given that Spain’s adult population stands near 39 million, that will mean some 440,000 minors might have been sexually abused by Roman Catholic priests, members of a non secular order and lay members of the church in recent a long time.
The survey conducted by GAD3, a widely known opinion pollster in Spain, had a margin of sampling error for all respondents of plus or minus 1.1 percentage points.
The ombudsman’s investigation represents Spain’s first official probe of the kid sex abuse problem that has undermined the Catholic Church around the globe, and the estimate from the survey is the primary time such a high variety of possible victims was identified within the country.
The survey, conducted by GAD3, a widely known opinion pollster in Spain, had a margin of sampling error for all respondents of plus or minus 1.1 percentage points.
Ombudsman Ángel Gabilondo didn’t extrapolate the survey findings right into a count of possible victims but said the odds were in keeping with similar reports in other European countries.
An investigative commission in France, which has a population of nearly 68 million in comparison with Spain’s 47.6 million, estimated based on surveys two years ago that some 330,000 minors had been abused by church personnel over 70 years.
The report calls for a public event to acknowledge victims, the creation of a state fund to pay compensation and for the Catholic Church to offer a strategy to help victims within the recovery process and introduce reforms to stop abuse and compensate victims.
Spain’s parliament voted in March 2022 to open the country’s first official investigation by the ombudsman into the extent of sexual abuse committed by priests and church authorities.
The government was forced to act after Spanish newspaper El Pais published abuse allegations involving greater than 1,200 victims, upsetting public outrage.
Acting Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez described the report as a “milestone” for Spain’s democracy.
“Today we’re slightly higher as a rustic, “ Sánchez said Friday from Brussels. ”Because a reality has been made known that everybody has known for a few years, but which nobody spoke of.”
He said the report and its recommendations can be studied and acted upon.
Spain’s Stolen Childhood abuse survivors’ group collaborated with the ombudsman’s office on the report. Juan Cuatrecasas, a co-founder of the group, said the ultimate document was “ positive” but it surely remained to be seen how lawmakers reply to the recommendations.
He said the report covered a time period that between the Sixties up until recent years.
Miguel Hurtado, who was representing a world group called End Clergy Abuse, called the report “disappointing” and inferior in its scope and conclusions to ones produced in Australia or Ireland.
Hurtado said the one effective model can be a truth commission with coercive investigative powers.
The Spanish Bishops’ Conference is scheduled to satisfy Monday to contemplate the ombudsman’s report.
A Madrid-based law firm is conducting a parallel inquiry ordered by the bishops’ conference. Its findings are expected to be released later this 12 months.
Only a handful of nations have had government-initiated or parliamentary inquiries into clergy sex abuse.
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Aritz Parra in Madrid and Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this report.
