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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More than 40 years fighting ghosts, memories, traumas and pain. Closed in on themselves and thinking that they were the only ones who had suffered sexual abuse by a priest or a religious person. This is how Wilder Flores defines the path that victims of pedophilia have taken in the Bolivian Church. “We were 12, 13, 14 years old; We woke up to the world of adolescence, we discovered our sexuality. At that age we were victimized and not only by compulsive pedophiles and serial rapists, we were also victims of the abuse of their power, of conscience and condemned to silence. We couldn't go to anyone,” says Flores. Condemned to silence, until now. Nine months after the clerical abuse scandal exploded in Bolivia, Flores and a group of affected people founded the Bolivian Community of Survivors, the first national association of victims of pedophilia in the Latin American country. Its objective is that there is a refuge for these people, so that they can come in confidence to tell their story and feel welcomed. “With that name we will fight to heal, to say enough is enough. Never more silence, never more repetition of these crimes. We seek justice, our fight is for the safety of our boys and girls,” says Flores, who has been named president of the association.
At the moment there are 25 active members that make up the organization, but they already count that more than half a thousand people have suffered abuse in Bolivia in recent decades, about 200 within the Society of Jesus. The abuse scandal in Bolivia broke out in May, after the publication of an investigative report by EL PAÍS on the secret diary of Spanish priest Alfonso Pedrajas in which he confessed to having abused 85 minors between the 1960s and the early 2000s. The Jesuit, who died in 2009, said that he told his superiors several times and that they covered it up for him. “We didn't know that there are many of us, that there are too many of us. After the diary of the pedophile priest was revealed, we found each other and discovered the hell to which we were collectively condemned,” says Flores. The report caused a media earthquake and several hitherto unpublished cases came to light. The Bolivian Prosecutor's Office began a major investigation—which is still open—and the Bolivian Episcopal Conference created a commission to compile complaints.
The members of the association assure that they know the power of the Church, especially the Jesuits, and that they are aware that they try to boycott all their initiatives to make the problem visible. “We know that we are facing a global organization, with a lot of economic power, that has been covering up complaints for 500 years. It is not the first scandal for them. They intend to use their protocols of silence,” explains Flores. For this reason, they add, they have created several channels so that more affected people can contact them and join the cause: through the email [email protected], the WhatsApp number +591 74657196 and their Facebook page Comunidad Boliviana de Survivors. “We call on those of us who were victims. Uncovering that pain is inevitable and necessary. We must emerge from the darkness to which we were condemned as children. There are many wounds to heal, it was not our fault, but now it is our responsibility to heal together and shout to the world that this cannot happen again and that those responsible for our holocaust are held accountable before justice,” announces the president of the association.
The economic situation of the country and the lack of official benefits make it difficult for the association to launch specific projects to inform and help those affected by abuse. Reason why they constantly carry out financing campaigns: “We call on all public and private institutions in Bolivia and abroad to join our objectives and help us with the protection of our children, from the legal and psychological to the spiritual. . We cannot affirm that they are the future of our society if we do not take care of their present.”
“It's not revenge, it's justice!”
The Jesuits of Bolivia, on the other hand, have turned their backs on victims like those who make up this association, and who have denounced to the Society the abuses they suffered in recent decades. In the case of the Jesuit Pedrajas, for example, the institution has closed the canonical investigation and has denied them reparation. In response, last October around twenty victims sued the Company for cover-up, for protecting pedophile clerics and silencing those affected. All the plaintiffs were former students of various Jesuit schools, who suffered attacks between 1972 and 1996, and who had already independently denounced their attackers. The complaint was filed against the current provincial of the order in Bolivia, Bernardo Mercado, “as the highest authority” of the institution. The complainants accuse the Company of being the author “by omission” of the crimes of rape of minors, since for years it was aware of the sexual abuse that occurred and did nothing to stop them.
In response, the Company published a statement in which it rejected its “responsibility” for the abuses that the victims reported and maintained that the complaint was intended to attack the institution. It also stated in the document that it has always demonstrated “a policy of absolute transparency” on these issues and that “its institutional duty is being fulfilled and guaranteed.” However, the truth is that the Jesuits received at least two complaints against two of their members before EL PAÍS published its report, one of them was Pedrajas, and neither opened an investigation as required by the canonical code nor informed the Bolivian civil authorities. “We know that, individually, many filed complaints that were never successful. They remained in the archives of the superiors of the Society of Jesus. They were never raised to the Public Ministry. Enough of resolving these issues under the table! We want the truth to be known. It's not revenge, it's justice! The institution that protected child sexual predators owes a historical debt to our society,” says Flores.
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