EL PAÍS launched an investigation into pedophilia in the Spanish Church in 2018 and has a data base updated with all known cases. If you know of any case that has not seen the light, you can write to us at: [email protected]. If it is a case in Latin America, the address is: [email protected].
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Former students of the Jesuit Casp school in Barcelona consider it “essential” that the Mossos d’Esquadra, the Prosecutor’s Office and the Ministries of Education and Justice act ex officio in the face of sexual abuse committed by religious members of the center towards the minors who studied there. .
This is stated in a report prepared by the former students and which comes to light a year after the sexual abuse committed by religious towards several students at the Jesuitas Casp center came to the public sphere, thanks to various reports from EL PAÍS.
In May 2023, after the publications of this newspaper, several former students of the school mobilized, created a support group for possible victims and 234 former students of the center signed a letter asking for stronger actions from those responsible for the school in response to reports of abuse. and that the avenue of ordinary justice be opened against the religious Francesc Peris, accused of sexual abuse of minors and who in recent weeks has ended up recognizing the facts.
The case of Peris was uncovered by EL PAÍS 2023 when the secret diary of the Spanish Jesuit Alfonso Pedrajas was made public, who admitted in a document to having abused 85 children between 1972 and 2000. After pulling the thread, it was discovered that the Jesuit Francisco Peris He was also involved in committing abuses. Peris was sent by the order to Latin America in the early 1980s after abusing minors in Barcelona. During 1983, he abused several minors in Colombia. He returned to Barcelona, to Casp’s school, and there he again committed abuse against minors. The order in Spain, after two years denying that it had no information about this religious, admitted that in 2005 it removed him for “inappropriate behavior” to a nursing home, where he continues to live. Another case that gained importance was that of Luis Tó, sentenced to two years in prison in 1992 for abusing a minor. He was sent to Bolivia and there he continued abusing minors.
In the report written by the alumni, they denounce that this year the Society of Jesus “has not taken sufficiently significant steps to influence truth, justice and reparation for the sexual abuses that took place at the school for decades.” They also demand that an interdepartmental monitoring commission be created on the abuses perpetrated by religious Jesuits Casp formed by representatives of the departments of Education, Justice, Health and Interior, Mossos d’Esquadra and the Sindicatures de Greuges of Catalonia and Barcelona.
“The prescription of cases of sexual abuse does not justify that public authorities do not act decisively and continuously” because “the emotional imprint of the victims has not expired, the need to really know the facts has not expired and the possibility of collecting new information that allows non-prescribed cases to be judicially channeled cannot be considered closed either,” they point out in the text.
This year, 15 reports of abuse have reached the email address inhabited by the victim support group, some of them coinciding with those that had already been made public, according to the report.
The former students are very critical of the actions in the last year by the Society of Jesus, on which the Jesuit teaching centers depend, and they assure that “without social and media pressure there would not have been any steps to clarify the facts and assume responsibilities.” “Although we positively value that the Society of Jesus has made some movements, the steps it has taken so far seem more aimed at protecting the religious institution than at defending and compensating the victims,” they underline in the report.
Specifically, they denounce that “months after the publication of the facts, no forceful measure has been taken” in relation to the confessed abuser Francesc Peris “nor have the results of the investigations carried out to date been made known.” They also criticize that “the Jesuit brothers formally reported to the police or accused internally have never been expelled from the religious order and that, until recently, they have enjoyed social recognition by the Society of Jesus.” Likewise, they denounce that the order “has not yet publicly requested that cases of pedophilia not prescribe” nor “has it communicated what reparation measures it has taken for the recognized victims.”
The institutional response “has been non-transparent and does not guarantee the independence of the process,” since “the audit of the events and the mediation with the victims have been contracted and paid for by the Society of Jesus itself, which is an involved party,” they point out. “We are not aware that the Society of Jesus has proactively sent documents or testimonies to the prosecution or to any public administration to clarify facts,” they add.
For this reason, they demand that the religious order “deliver to the Mossos d’Esquadra, the Prosecutor’s Office and the Department of Education any information and documentation related to cases of sexual abuse in their schools.” They also ask that the Company “detail the measures taken so far towards the abusers and victims of the cases of sexual abuse that have been perpetrated at the Jesuit Casp school.”
Likewise, they demand “transparency in the actions that affect cases from the past” and that, “when it is known that a member of the Company has committed an abuse, the organization acts accordingly, acting ex officio and filing a complaint against all the cases they know.”
Another demand is the “assumption of responsibilities of the management teams” of the Jesuitas Casp school in the different courses in which there is evidence of abuse, since they were “guardians of the integrity of the students of all these promotions.” .
The former students consider it essential that the specific actions generated by the Jesuitas Casp case “help to protocolize actions on cases of past sexual abuse that have occurred in other schools.”
For the definition of protocols and prevention measures, they consider that it is important to “pay special attention to the particularities presented by private religious centers” given that “spaces for recess and spiritual counseling have been common scenes of sexual abuse and that the systems of “Ecclesiastical school governance—which are private and hierarchical in nature—appear to contribute to these crimes.”
Jesuitas Educación has had the Jesuits Protection Channel active since 2018, but the alumni claim that “it does not meet the necessary guarantees of independence.” Therefore, for greater effectiveness in reporting, they propose to “review and update existing services to establish a channel and unit for attention to sexual abuse in school environments that is unique, public, independent, interdepartmental, binding, professional, permanent, retroactive and with sufficient resources.”
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