An estimated one in a hundred people in Spain has been a victim of sexual abuse by members of the Church. The Spanish ombudsman wrote this on Friday in a 777-page letter report. It shows that 1.13 percent of respondents experienced sexual abuse in a religious context as a child. According to the Spanish newspaper El País This makes Spain the country with the highest official prognosis of victims. “The issue is, without a doubt, nothing short of scandalous,” the ombudsman said.
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The percentage concerns abuse by priests and other clergy, but also by non-clergy people such as teachers and volunteers in church institutions. The investigation focuses mainly on abuse within the Catholic Church. More than eight thousand Spaniards completed a questionnaire for the study, a sample that the ombudsman believes is representative of the Spanish population. Some victims were female, but most were male.
Unjustified silence
The report is critical of the role of the church in covering up these abuses. Even during this investigation, the ombudsman sometimes encountered bishops who did not want to cooperate. The ombudsman speaks of “unjustified silence” as a result of which the suffering and isolation of victims sometimes went unnoticed for years. “The seriousness of the phenomenon is evident not only from how intensely the victims have suffered, but also from the large number of people affected and how their trust has been betrayed by an institution that clearly exercises power and moral authority.”
In the report, the ombudsman describes the consequences this has had for the victims. The majority of those interviewed suffered from emotional or behavioral problems. They further talked about relationship problems, sleep problems and eating disorders. A third of the victims experienced post-traumatic stress, and another third of them showed symptoms of depression. Other consequences mentioned were suicidal thoughts, low self-confidence, poor performance at school and anger. A total of 15 percent of victims also mentioned substance abuse and rejection of physical contact, which, according to the ombudsman, plays “a very painful” role in these people’s lives.