A historic demand for victims of sexual abuse in the Church begins its legislative journey this Tuesday. The Congress of Deputies will debate, at the request of the Parliament of Catalonia, whether to process the reform of the Penal Code to declare crimes related to pedophilia imprescriptible. If it ends up going ahead, the legal change will be developed while waiting for the reparation measures for victims of the Church proposed a year ago by the Ombudsman to be finalized.
The victims celebrate the first step of the legislation, but warn that there is still work to do. “The time for good words from politicians is over, we need action and reparation measures,” says psychiatrist and activist Miquel Àngel Hurtado, who suffered abuse from the monk of the Montserrat monastery Andreu Soler.
The Catalan deputies who will defend the proposal in Congress are Judith Alcalá (PSC), Raquel Sans (ERC) and Susana Segovia (Comuns). The three parliamentarians trust that Congress will support the proposal with a large majority and that the PP (which abstained in the Parliamentary vote that passed the last legislature thanks to the support of the three left-wing groups and Junts y Ciudadanos) don’t reject it.
The measure is, for now, the only result of the pioneering commission of investigation into pedophilia in the Church that the Parliament held during the last term. The early elections meant that the conclusions could not be drawn up, but the parliamentary work of listening to victims, experts and some ecclesiastical representatives (some stood up to the commission, such as Cardinal Juan José Omella) was almost completed.
“It is an important modification of the Penal Code to protect minors against attacks that mark them for life,” says Alcalá. Segovia defends the imprescriptibility of sexual crimes against minors, since it is a type of crime that is associated with late complaints. “Victims usually feel ashamed and often cannot report, for example, until their parents have died,” explains the parliamentarian.
Sans highlights that a similar measure has been approved in 23 countries and emphasizes the “solidarity” of those affected, since the imprescriptibility of crimes will benefit future victims, but not those who suffered abuse in the past, since in their case the crimes have prescribed.
The legal change, however, raises suspicions among experts in Criminal Law. The professor at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) and the University of Lleida (UdL) Josep Maria Tamarit, who also coordinated the Ombudsman’s report on pedophilia, focuses his criticism on politicians: “They are generating expectations that “They will not be able to be satisfied and giving the impression that they are addressing the problem, while not promoting measures that could be more effective.” In this sense, Tamarit emphasizes that reparation to the victims “is something still pending.”
A few weeks ago, the Ombudsman, Ángel Gabilondo, urged the Cortes to implement as soon as possible “concrete measures” included in his report delivered a year ago, such as the status of victim of sexual abuse, the celebration of a public event and the creation of a state compensation fund with the participation of the Church. This fund has generated discrepancies between the Government and the Episcopal Conference and even between members of the religious institution.
The pending tasks
“There is a lack of political will, both in Catalonia and in Madrid, and the victims remain helpless,” denounces Hurtado. Reparation not only operates on the symbolic level, with a recognition of the abuses and cover-up by the Church, as well as the lack of monitoring of abuses in educational institutions linked to congregations by the public administration. It must also be addressed with compensation, for which it is not yet known how they will be calculated or where their funds will come from.
“Who pays us the expenses that we have had for years in private therapies? Who decides who, how much and how to pay? Do the bishops decide it? “Will they be judge and party?” Hurtado emphasizes. “There are legal mechanisms to get the Church to pay, we will see if the most progressive Government in history will lose power through its mouth or act,” he adds.
Beyond compensation, Hurtado recalls that “Montserrat could decide to hold an act and put up a monument of remembrance to the victims of pedophilia caused by monks of the monastery, to ensure that it is not forgotten, but it does not do so.” On the institutional level, after listening to several of the victims last year, the Parliament decided to award the institution’s gold medal to the Monastery despite having covered up the abuses for years, although it finally recognized them in 2019 after they were public. .
Tamarit recalls that the Ombudsman’s proposal went through an Arbitration Center, similar to the one created in 2011 in Belgium, in which the Catholic Church agreed to participate and assume two thirds of the costs of the institution, in addition to the compensation that the body agreed in favor of the victims. “Although, of course, this model requires a will on the part of the Church and the State,” adds the professor.
Hurtado welcomes the Australian model, whose National Reparation Program for Child Sexual Abuse allowed victims to receive counseling throughout the reparation process, agreed to individualized compensation and provided a direct personal response (for example, apologies from the institution responsible, recognition of responsibility and commitments of non-repetition).
Something like this has not yet happened in Spain. “The Church is a plural institution and, until now, there have been very different responses from the different congregations. Unfortunately, the Episcopal Conference has not done things as could be expected and has been making decisions without a clear route, according to the pressures it was receiving,” criticizes Tamarit.
The steps taken
Sans highlights the steps taken by the different regional administrations in supporting new victims of child abuse: from the Navarrese law to the commitment of the Generalitat of Catalonia to the Barnahus, a comprehensive care model where in a home, far from police stations and hospitals, a conducive environment is created to care for minor victims of abuse. The parliamentarian also highlights the measures to prevent child abuse in leisure spaces.
For his part, Segovia advances that his group will bring to Parliament this legislature a reform of the Civil Code so that victims could request compensation, since the imprescriptibility of civil action can, unlike criminal action, be applied with retroactive effects. This is another of the measures demanded by the victims and that, in the words of Hurtado, “depends entirely on Catalonia, not on Madrid.”
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