Opus Dei has identified five cases of sexual abuse of minors in its structures in Portugaland has reported that at least one of the alleged attackers is an unidentified priest and three are laymen, in addition to another still unknown suspect.
In a statement released this week, the Catholic organization reported that four of the reported abuses occurred in a Lisbon school for boys, the Planalto College -from the Portuguese Cooperative for the Promotion of Educational Centers, with which Opus Dei collaborates-, while the fifth case occurred in an unidentified center for young people. All the cases occurred before the 2000s, according to the note made public by that religious entity.
Sexual abuse of minors committed within the Portuguese Church is under scrutiny after this year an independent commission revealed that, since 1950, there are at least 4,815 victims.
Precisely, these five cases would have been those sent by the group of experts to the prelature. Opus Dei has explained that one of the cases dates back to “around the year 2000” in the aforementioned school, when a cleric who has not yet been identified made “improper” questions during confession to a student
“The internal investigation will advance when there is more information,” adds the entity, and reports that they learned of the second case three years ago, and that it was already referred to Justice and archived by the prosecution lusa.
The victim denounced on that occasion that in 1997 he suffered “improper touching of one of the monitors during a leisure activity in one of the institutions for boys to which the prelature provides pastoral care”.
“An internal investigation was carried out that was not conclusive and, despite the defendant pleading not guilty, a preventive, not punitive, measure was adoptednot to carry out activities of the prelature with young people”, adds the text.
teachers
The other three cases also occurred at Colegio Planalto until the 1990s, and involved “improper touching” of students by a teacher and a “collaborator” who no longer work at the center, as well as a person for whom there is no record of “having worked at the center,” according to Opus Dei. The teacher denounced at the school “ceased to belong to Opus Dei a few years later.”
In the case of the collaborator, who has not worked at the center “for more than two decades”, the school management received “comments about a situation with data that coincides with those described” three years ago and contacted the victimwho did not want to take action.
“On that occasion, other investigations were carried out, without obtaining information for the complaintincludes the statement.
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Regarding the unidentified worker, Fomento “is evaluating the situation to articulate with the civil authorities and identify and follow up on the victim” and it will be then when, according to the text, Opus Dei will take action.
Also, they keep waiting for more information that the independent commission that carried out the study in Portugal can provide.