The request to create a commission in Parliament to investigate the responsibility of the Church in cases of sexual abuse has been formalized this Tuesday, after days of tug-of-war. Esquerra and the CUP have joined the initiative promoted by En Comú Podem so that the Parliament investigates episodes related to “pederasty in the Church” and purges responsibilities. But the support achieved is not enough for the plenary to activate the commission.
The votes of Junts or the PSC will be necessary to achieve the green light in the process. A support that is made to beg for the misgivings shown by the formation of Carles Puigdemont, and also the Socialists, when it comes to pointing out the clergy. “It’s not just happening in the Church,” Alicia Romero argued last Friday, when she was asked about the PSC’s position in relation to facilitating the parliamentary investigation into sexual abuse. “It is something that is happening in many areas, also in centers for minors that depend on the Generalitat,” she pointed out. The socialist spokeswoman said that her party is in the “reflection” phase to assess whether it is worth opening the focus and not focusing the investigation only on the practices that occurred at the hands of priests and other religious.
A very similar argument is defended by Junts, which considers that the problem of sexual abuse goes beyond a specific context. Party sources justify their reservations in an interest in forming an investigation commission that does not stay in the ecclesiastical sphere and that tries to delve, also, into abuses that occurred in non-religious schools, in extracurricular, sports or recreational activities. Junts has advanced that it will present amendments to the common proposal, Esquerra and the CUP. At the beginning of the month, Podemos, ERC and Bildu presented in the Congress of Deputies a request for the creation of a parliamentary commission on the alleged abuse of minors within the Catholic Church. The leader of JxCAT Miriam Nogueras assured then that the formation had no doubts: “Obviously we are going to give support.”
The text presented to the Parliament registry this Tuesday maintains that sexual violence against minors is “a serious problem” in Catalonia, and states that in 2019 more than 1,000 complaints were filed for this type of crime. “But it is estimated that reported cases only represent 15% of sexual abuse against children.”
The president Pere Aragonès and the Minister of Social Rights, Violant Cervera, met last week with the writer Alejandro Palomas, who has denounced the sexual abuse he suffered when he was a student at the La Salle school in Premià de Mar. The president and the counselor showed all their “collaboration” with Palomas and expressed their commitment to combat “the scourge” of sexual abuse. Aragonés and Cervera stated that the Government will create an interdepartmental working group to address the problem “with the maximum transversality”.
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