The Palace of Justice of Murcia, seat of the Provincial Court, in a file photo. /
The State Attorney General’s Office will carry out a qualitative analysis of all the proceedings sent, most of which are concentrated in Catalonia and the Community of Madrid
The superior prosecutors from all over Spain sent to the State Attorney General’s Office (FGE) a total of 68 cases of investigation in process for assaults and sexual abuse of minors within congregations, schools or any other religious institution. In the Region of Murcia there are six of these procedures in process.
The autonomous community with the most open proceedings for crimes of sexual assault on minors in religious institutions is Catalonia with 14, followed by the Community of Madrid, with eight, according to the FGE in a statement. Next, Andalusia and Galicia are located, with seven procedures in process each; the Region of Murcia, with six; Castilla-La Mancha and Castilla y León, with five each; Basque Country, Valencian Community and Balearic Islands, with four; and Aragon and the Canary Islands, with two.
Meanwhile, the Superior Prosecutor’s Offices of Asturias, Cantabria, Extremadura, La Rioja and Navarra informed the State Attorney General’s Office that “there are no criminal proceedings” in process for cases of abuse of minors in religious institutions in their autonomous communities.
Once the quantitative data related to the cases has been received, the Prosecutor’s Office explains that it will carry out “a qualitative analysis of them in order to study and measure the phenomenon of the procedures in process.” The superior prosecutor’s offices of the 17 autonomous communities had until this week to respond to the request issued on January 31 by the Attorney General’s Office to send it information on the criminal proceedings in process initiated both in judicial and prosecutorial offices, and that have as their purpose the clarification of complaints or complaints for the alleged commission of aggression and sexual abuse of minors within congregations, schools or any other religious institution.
The Prosecutor’s Office points out that “promoting the action of justice is the constitutional mandate and the commitment in the work of the prosecutors in the face of facts that may constitute a crime.” Prosecutor sources explained that this “manual” collection of data from the different prosecutor’s offices was the only way to have a “global vision” of diagnosing the situation, since the Public Ministry’s computer applications through which they share information does not allow to have disaggregated data to identify, for example, the characteristics of the perpetrator of the abuse.
In 2019, the Prosecutor’s Office, which was then led by the prosecutor María José Segarra, sent a report to the Ministry of Justice where it warned of a “deficient” response to the problem of abuses in the Catholic Church in Spain and proposed to investigate past cases, such as have done in other countries such as Australia, Holland or Austria.
Initiatives in Congress
From the Executive they have explained that these actions by the Prosecutor’s Office “do not exhaust” other measures that the Government is studying “to clarify the facts and prevent them from happening again”, also including parliamentary initiatives, referring to cases of sexual assault and abuse against minors in religious institutions.
Specifically, a few days before the State Attorney General took over the investigation of abuses in religious institutions, United We Can, ERC and EH Bildu registered an initiative in Congress to create a parliamentary commission to investigate these cases in the Catholic Church. Likewise, the PNV presented another initiative so that an independent commission of experts would carry out the report.
For its part, the PSOE has presented an initiative for the Ombudsman, Ángel Gabilondo, to lead the investigation of abuses in the Church, hand in hand with an independent commission made up of experts, representatives of victims’ associations and even members of the Church itself. At the moment, the PSOE is negotiating with the rest of the proponent formations to reach an agreement on the best formula to investigate the abuses within the Catholic Church.
