Up to 440,000 victims of child abuse in Spanish church, Ombudsman reports

Just before the report was presented in parliament, the Spain’s Episcopal Conference said it would hold an extraordinary meeting on Monday to discuss its findings.

Spain’s parliament in March 2022 overwhelmingly approved the creation of an independent commission led by the country’s ombudsman to ‘shed light’ on allegations of sexual abuse of ‘defenceless boys and girls’ within the Catholic Church. ALSO READ: Spanish Congress backs move for inquiry into child abuse in Catholic Church.

Spain’s Catholic Church, which for years flatly refused to carry out its own probe, declined to take part in the independent investigation, although it did cooperate by providing documents on cases of sexual abuse that had been collected by dioceses.

But as political pressure mounted, it tasked a private law firm in February 2022 with an ‘audit’ into past and present sexual abuse by clergy, teachers and others associated with the Church, which should be completed by the end of the year. ALSO READ: Spain’s Catholic Church asks law firm to investigate allegations of child abuse.

The Spanish Church said in June it had discovered 927 cases of child abuse through a complaints procedure launched in 2020. It argues it has set up protocols for dealing with sexual abuse and has set up ‘child protection’ offices within dioceses.

But a probe by daily newspaper El País which began in 2018 has since uncovered 2,206 victims and 1,036 alleged abusers dating back to 1927.

‘According to experts, this is just the tip of the iceberg,’ the newspaper wrote on Friday before the report was published.

The Church’s abuse crisis exploded onto the international stage in 2002 when the Boston Globe newspaper revealed priests had sexually abused children for decades and church leaders had covered it up.

Patterns of widespread abuse of children were later reported across the United States and Europe, in Chile and Australia, undercutting the moral authority of the 1.3 billion-member Church and taking a toll on its membership.

An independent commission in neighbouring France concluded in 2021 that some 216,000 children — mostly boys — had been sexually abused by clergy since 1950.

In Germany a study found 3,677 cases of abuse between 1946 and 2014 while in Ireland more than 14,500 people received compensation though a government scheme for those abused at juvenile facilities run by the Catholic Church.

En el @Congreso_Es Ángel Gabilondo: “Este es un informe necesario para dar respuesta a una situación de sufrimiento y de soledad que durante años se ha mantenido, de una u otra manera, cubierta por un injusto silencio”https://t.co/NrbqRe1HTj pic.twitter.com/lWepqv9fFT

— Defensor del Pueblo (@DefensorPuebloE) October 27, 2023